Information and communication technology adoption and supply chain performance among cooperative societies in Embu county in Kenya

Abstract

Poor or lack of integrated ICT in supply chain management and mechanisms for supply chain performance improvement has been a major drawback in the quest to ameliorate productivity in cooperative societies not only in Kenya but also in the larger developing world. Successful Supply Chain Performance results to a successful business in terms of its operations. However viable the business is, if its SC is not properly monitored, it may not yield the expected results. This success is mostly supported by the use of ICT. Adoption of ICT by most firms in this era of technological shift has brought positive progress in operations. Thus Cooperatives have integrated ICT in their supply chains operations in order to realize this success. The focus of this study is to determine the extent to which Cooperative Societies in Embu County have adopted ICT, to establish the relationship between ICT adoption and Supply Chain Performance and to determine the Factors affecting ICT adoption by the Cooperative Societies. The sector of Cooperative was selected because it represents the lowest economies at the grass root by very ordinary entrepreneurs and the need to make them function effectively to benefit their members by adopting ICT to enhance their Supply Chain Performance. The respondents included managers of the Societies because they have the knowledge in terms of Cooperative operations. The study was descriptive in nature. The researcher used structured questionnaires and administered them by herself to 30 cooperative societies with varied activities. Data was collected and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics involving frequencies and percentages, mean and standard deviation and factor analysis. The findings found out that ICT plays a key role in the successful performance of the supply chain among Cooperative societies in Embu County in Kenya. The study concluded that Cooperatives in Embu have moderately adopted ICT in their supply chain functional areas of procurement, production Scheduling, Inventory control, interlink ages, Decision Making and Risk Management. It was also noted that various factors contributed positively to this ICT adoption. The management, together with the ministry of cooperatives should aim at increasing the extent of ICT usage by indentifying and mitigating the underlying challenges towards this achievement.