The Role of Supply Management for Sales and Operations Planning During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of supply management for sales and operations planning (S&OP) during the COVID-19 pandemic. A deductive approach was deployed by building on a qualitative pre-study and various strands of SCM literature. All in all, eight hypotheses were derived and subsequently tested by drawing on an empirical sample collected from 130 global manufacturing firms operating in China. The data was then analyzed using partial least squares (PLS) analysis. The results indicated that business performance was positively influenced by the extent of S&OP activities, which in turn proved to be positively influenced by organizational setup, information sharing and supply management practices. The level of supply chain leadership turned out to act as antecedent to all of the three latter aforementioned.