SUPPLY CHAIN RESILIENCE STRATEGIES AND PERFORMANCE OF FLORICULTURAL FIRMS IN NAKURU COUNTY, KENYA.

Abstract

The industry of floriculture has a myriad of diverse and continuous challenges which must be counteracted, failure to which will lead to great losses, business closure, and recovery challenges. There is no exception in the Kenyan floricultural supply chain environment. It is important that firms adopt relevant strategies to guarantee resilience against unforeseen interferences by enhancing robustness and business continuity. Nevertheless how, whether, and which resilience strategies affect performance in floricultural firms is a topic that is under-explored. Using the theories of Contingency, Complex Adaptive System, Agency, Relational, and Technology Organization Environment Model collectively with the empirical literature, this study illuminates the association between supply chain resilience strategies and firm performance. The goals of the study were to investigate the effects of supply chain agility, collaboration, risk management and flexibility strategies, on the performance of floriculture firms. Moreover, the moderating effect of supply chain technology between these strategies and performance of floricultural firms was investigated. Cross-sectional survey research design was employed. Target population was 101 flower firms in Nakuru County, Kenya. Purposive sampling was used to pick 255 respondents. Primary data were collected using questionnaires. A pilot study was conducted on 5 flower firms in Nakuru and Nairobi County that were not part of the sample. Descriptive correlation and ordinal regression analyses were conducted. Results revealed that supply chain agility, collaboration, and risk management strategies significantly improved the performance of floricultural firms. Results further showed that, risk management, agility, and collaboration significantly contributed to floricultural firms’ performance while flexibility was insignificant. Further it was evident that the interaction between supply chain technology and collaboration significantly reduced the effect on performance, as did the interaction between agility and supply chain technology. Conversely, the interaction between flexibility and supply chain technology significantly increased the effect on performance. However, risk management had no effect on performance upon the introduction of the interaction term. In conclusion, floricultural firms require current information regarding uncertainties in market dynamism to effectively mitigate supply chain risks and forecast demand. Achieving this requires agility, flexibility, and enhanced collaboration across the floricultural supply chain. Collaboration can be enhanced by proactively addressing supply chain issues and sharing information with partners in anticipation of disruptions and demand fluctuations. Flexibility and agility can spearhead and perk up responsiveness to production and transportation challenges. Risk management can be strengthened by transferring risks to third parties like insurance, to reduce their impact and build resilience. Finally, investing in technologies like IoT, Blockchain, and big data analytics can improve collaboration and visibility of market information, thereby boosting performance and resilience. Supply chain cloud technologies further aid decision-making by enabling re-engineering of supply chains to adapt to variations in flower production and transportation challenges. Future research should explore additional supply chain resilience strategies not covered in this study, focusing on cross-sector comparisons and diverse research methodologies to uncover sector-specific challenges and opportunities and refine resilience approaches.