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Abstract
This research focuses on an Australian agribusiness supply chain, the Australian
Beef Supply Chain. The definition of the Australian Beef Supply Chain is the chain or
sequence of all activities from the breeding property to the domestic or overseas
consumers.
The beef sector in Australia is undergoing rapid change because of globalisation,
a highly competitive beef market (local and export), quicker production cycle and
delivery times and consequently reduced inventories, a general speed-up of the rate of
change in the business environment, the trend toward more outsourcing of activities, and
the rapid development of IT. In this business environment, advanced supply chain
systems have the potential to provide significant contributions to Australian beef industry
performance.
A conceptual framework of the research project has been proposed. There are
three elements of conceptual framework. Firstly, supply chain practice of Australian beef
industry consists of five sub-elements such as strategic supplier partnerships, customer
relationships, information sharing, information quality and a lean system. Moreover,
there is an antecedent of cooperative behaviour such as trust and commitment influencing
supply chain practice and supply chain performance indicators. Secondly, supply chain
performance indicators include four sub-elements such as flexibility, efficiency, food
quality and responsiveness. Finally, the competitive advantage framework of the
Australian beef enterprises consists of price, quality, export sales growth and time to
market.
As a further step of the research after developing the conceptual framework, the
research project focuses the analysis on how the antecedents of the sub-elements of
supply chain practice affect supply chain performance in Australian beef enterprises, how
trust and commitment in trading partners affect supply chain performance, how attributes
such as flexibility, efficiency, food quality and responsiveness influence the sub-elements
of competitive advantage.
The research project leads on to further work on how Australian beef enterprises
measure their supply chain performance and what the major difficulties are arising when
implementing supply chain management in the Australian beef industry and what kind of
changes can be made to beef supply chains to enhance their performance.