Time Lag Effect of Supply Chain Management on Firm Performance

The objective of this paper is to identify time lag effect in the relationship between supply chain management and financial performance. We hypothesize that firms with higher supply chain management capability are associated with higher financial performance and the impact would last longer. In addition, we introduce two contextual variables, ownership and market orientation, to detect the moderating effect of ownership structure and organizational culture, respectively. We use firm-level empirical data from 1,131 public Chinese manufacturing firms for the 2010–2019 period to investigate the effect and the result shows that there is a two-year time lag effect in the relationship, which means the positive impact of current supply chain management would last for three years. Furthermore, we find evidence that supply chain management in non-state-owned firms is more efficient and its positive financial impact would last longer than that in state-owned enterprises. Finally, we indicate that market-orientation can’t moderate the relationship between supply chain management and financial performance.