How U.S. Businesses are Adapting to Changing Markets

I want to express my sincere appreciation to my dissertation advisors, Dr. Antonis Stylianou and Dr. Chandrasekar Subramaniam, for their unwavering support and guidance throughout my dissertation journey. I appreciate their enthusiasm for this research, which matches my own. They were always there to support me and spent a lot of time helping me improve important aspects of my work. I am grateful to my dissertation committee members, Dr. Sungjune Park, Dr. Thomas Stevenson, and Dr. Arun Rai, for their valuable feedback and insightful suggestions to my research. I want to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Rai for generously agreeing to be a part of my committee as an external expert. 

Their valuable guidance and expertise greatly contributed to the empirical study conducted in this dissertation.

I would like to express my gratitude to the faculty members at the Department of Business Information Systems and Operations Management who have been instrumental in my academic journey. Throughout the program, I had the privilege of working with esteemed professors such as Dr. Moutaz Khouja, Dr. Ram Kumar, and Dr. Susan Winter, who has since moved on to the National Science Foundation. Their guidance and teachings have greatly contributed to my learning experience. Throughout my Ph.D. program, I've been fortunate to have received immense moral and intellectual support from numerous fellow students and friends. I want to express my sincere gratitude to Haya Ajjan and Adeel Zaffar for their unwavering support throughout my research. A computer simulation approach was utilized to model KM IT and explore the ways in which it impacts the average employee knowledge level within firms. By achieving this objective, we can gain a deeper understanding of how KM IT is used in supply chains and how it adapts to the complexities of the real world.

I would like to express my gratitude to Jennifer Norberg at the Association for Operations Management and the executive officers at the Institute of Supply Management for their valuable assistance in collecting survey data.

Finally, I want to express my gratitude to my parents for their unwavering support and belief in my abilities. They have always been there to motivate me and push me to reach my highest potential. I want to express my gratitude to my beloved husband, Jian, for standing by my side throughout this lengthy journey. His unwavering love and unwavering support gave me immense strength and The main goal of this dissertation is to examine how supply chain knowledge management capability, supported by supply chain IT, affects the performance of the supply chain. The resource-based view and its extension - the relational view, which explores the competitive advantages of firms in interorganizational relationships, served as the theoretical foundation. The primary focus of the dissertation is to examine how supply chain IT infrastructure influences the knowledge management capability of supply chains and, consequently, its effect on supply chain performance. An empirical research method was utilized to investigate the research questions raised in order to fulfill this objective. The second research objective is to gain a deeper understanding of the IT used in supply chains, specifically the IT for knowledge management activities, and how it affects the long-term knowledge outcome of firms within the supply chain. This can help break down barriers between different departments and organizations, allowing for better sharing of information and improving coordination. The possibility of developing a global optimization arises in integrated SC IT environments (Rai et al. 2006). The seamless integration of supply chain applications with ERP systems,

SC process integration refers to how well a supply chain's key processes are designed to work with the unique business processes of its partners (Saraf et al. 2007). 

The relational focus of supply chain partners drives it (Dyer and Singh 1998). Process integration involves the coordination of activities among supply chain firms to meet collective goals. Supply chain processes can be executed using automated information systems or with the help of human agents. Every company in the supply chain follows a specific set of rules and procedures to carry out their operations. In an integrated supply chain environment, the decision outcomes from one step seamlessly flow into the next step, creating a connected and uninterrupted chain of supply chain activities. The capability is demonstrated through the coordinated inter-firm activities, where joint actions and prompt assistance with exception handling are the norms (Robicheaux and Coleman 1994). The closely connected procedures can lower transaction costs in the supply chain (Goldhar and Lei 1991). The integration capability of SC IT can greatly improve the supply chain's ability to achieve seamless and interconnected business processes. Establishing standardized data definitions for important data fields creates a cohesive semantic framework that facilitates collaboration among companies. Integrated applications streamline data entry by allowing information to be entered once and automatically populated across multiple system functions.