Abstract:
In the construction industry supply chain management (SCM) is a vital tool in controlling business
processes in a defined and a systematic way to improve quality, time management and increase profit.
Effective supply chain management has become a potentially valuable method of securing and
improving competitive advantage and organizational performance since competition no longer between
organizations, but between global organizations and among supply chains. This paper aims to
investigate the impact of supply chain management practices on competitive advantage and
organizational performance in the construction industry, Sri Lanka, due to the lack of application of
supply chain management practices to determine the organizational performance in the competitive
environment. Further, this study focuses five SCM practices: strategic supplier partnership, customer
relationship, level of information sharing, quality of information sharing, and postponement to
investigate what supply chain management is, how it works in increase competitive advantage and what
are its dynamics. Six hypotheses were developed based on the constructed conceptual framework
derived from the supply chain management literature. The data were collected over the survey technique
by randomly administering structured questionnaires from 198 respondents of construction
management teams and different sub-contractors. First Multiple regression analysis was performed to
explore the impact of five supply chain management practices on competitive advantage and
organizational performance in the construction industry and the analysis was carried out the factor
analysis to explore the significance of supply chain management dimensions. The results of the
regression analysis indicated that all SCM variables have a positive impact on competitive advantages
and organizational performance of the construction industry in Sri Lanka. Moreover, it suggested that
the strategic supplier partnership was the most significant SCM variable which determines the
competitive advantage and level of information sharing variable was the less significant variable
towards competitive advantage. The results of this study provide new insights to the construction
companies to better understand the significant role that SCM variables play in respect to the competitive
advantages and organizational performance in Sri Lanka. The study has outlined to examine the five 0
SCM variables in construction industry. Hence future study can be outlined to further examine the
impact of SCM on competitive advantages in other industries. Moreover, the future study can be
outlined to further examine the impact of SCM variables in different dimensions especially including
customer perspective in respect to human variables. Besides, this study was based on the limited largescale construction companies operated in Sri Lanka and ignore the small and medium scale
supermarkets.