An Adaptive Framework for Improving the Effectiveness of Virtual Enterprises in the Supply Chain

This thesis describes a research project that develops an adaptive framework for improving the effectiveness of virtual enterprises in the supply chains in Mongolia. The research takes empirical and quantitative approach to study the phenomenon of virtual enterprises. Based on a literature review, the factors that influence organisations to join in virtual enterprises are studied by a higher-order factor analysis. As a result, agility is identified as one of the main benefits organisations can gain by joining a virtual enterprise temporarily and changes in business performance are conceived as the measures of effectiveness. Next, a taxonomy of enterprises is developed with five distinguishing clusters that achieve differing levels of agility and business performance. This study suggests that enterprises that are monitoring changes in their business environment take most advantage of agility and achieve the best levels of performance.
These findings then allow an adaptive framework based on common reference architectures to be developed as a main contribution of this study. The framework includes a breeding environment as a ‘pool’ of prepared enterprises with the ability to form temporary collaborations to react responsively, rapidly and effectively to the fast-changing opportunities. A structural equation model was used to examine the model fit with the supporting hypotheses, based on the observed data. Then, a powerful clustered expectation maximisation algorithm was applied to the analysis of the grouped enterprises.
Finally, a simulation-based case study was conducted to validate the developed framework. The results provide rich empirical evidence of the beneficial impact of virtual enterprises on agile supply chains. The research provides rich empirical evidence of the beneficial impact of virtual enterprises on agile supply chains. It also provides theoretical and managerial insights that can be used to strengthen the drivers, enablers and capabilities that enhance the effectiveness of virtual enterprises collaboration in agile supply chains that can be translated to a global context. These are major contributions the ‘body of knowledge’ in themselves, but the research also adds usefully to the study of applied research methodologies in the area.