The drivers for information technology application in supply chain management: How developing countries’ companies facing globalization

More and more developing countries´ companies have being becoming international in recent years. Therefore, these companies have to face global supply chains rather than the former domestic ones. The use of information technology (IT) is considered a prerequisite for the effective control of today´s complex global supply chains. Based on empirical data from 10 multinational companies of China, this paper presents a classification of the ways in which companies use IT in SCM, and examines the drivers for these different utilization types. According to the findings of this research, the purposes of using of IT in SCM can be divided into 1) transaction processing, 2) supply chain planning and collaboration, and 3) order tracking and delivery coordination. The findings further suggest that the drivers between these three uses of IT in SCM differ.