Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Operational Information Sharing within Supply Chain Channels in Malaysia

The literature on supply chain and information has grown consistently over the past few years. This scenario reflects that that academics and practitioners have realized that in order for firms to become flexible, adaptable and efficient, they must focus their resources on managing the information throughout the supply chain channel. On the other hand, the competitive global marketplace requires firms to be flexible, for example they need to be able to share the information so that they can deliver materials with rapid cycle, or driving towards operational excellence. Although information sharing among trading partners is consistently mentioned as a key requirement of effectiveness supply chain management, research on information sharing is scarce particularly in Malaysian cases. This lack of research provides little guidance and support for those managers interested in improving their information sharing with the suppliers and customers. The main aim of this paper is to identify what are the factors influencing the effectiveness of operational information sharing. Questionnaires were sent to supply chain managers at E&E firms in several industries in Malaysia. Five independent variables namely, information quality, IT commitment, SCM commitment, organizational size and trust were significantly related to operational information sharing. This finding indicates that it is extremely important to consider the quality of the information and the ability of the recipients to utilize the information based on differences in technologies being used, apart from their commitment on SCM, size of their organizations and trust among the partners. With the critical role that operational information plays in increasing the collaboration among supply chain partners, these factors are believed can facilitate the effectiveness of operational information sharing by supporting the practitioners to build capabilities to compete globally.