The impact of supply chain strategies on supply chain integration

While supply chain strategies and supply chain integration have attracted considerable academic and practical attention and supply chain integration have been accepted as a better way to achieve supply chain success, there is still a need to understand how supply chain integration is linked with supply chain strategies. The literature shows some studies in what influence supply chain integration and its consequences, but a deep investigation of the linkage between supply chain integration and supply chain strategies is still missing. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the relationship between two types of supply chain integration (i.e. internal integration and external integration) and two supply chain strategies (i.e. lean and agile). The regression analyses of the survey data from 604 manufacturing companies in China show that both lean and agile have significant positive effect on supply chain integration.