Trust and technology adoption in Australian agribusiness supply chains: a gap analysis approach

Trust and technology adoption in Australian agribusiness supply chains: a gap analysis approach

[Abstract]: Australian agribusiness supply chains make an important contribution to the Australian economy. Highly cohesive supply chain partnerships between the sectors from the farm gate to the retailers and restaurants of Australian agribusiness are essential for continued sustainable growth in Australian agribusiness. Trust and technology adoption have been identified as critical success factors in supply chain management. This research has investigated the level and importance of the factors of trust and technology adoption focusing on the Australian meat and horticulture industry supply chains. The term level relates to the perceived performance level and the term importance relates to the expected performance level for the factors of trust and technology adoption used in this research. The study has set about to identify the critical gaps between the level and importance for the factors of trust and technology adoption in the Australian meat and horticulture industry supply chains. The research also investigated other important success factors relating to partnership, technology, government, outsourcing and traceability in the Australian agribusiness supply chains. In this research 36 cases studies were undertaken through face-to-face interviews with senior managers from the respective case study organisations. The research has shown the meat and horticulture industry supply chain rated the factors of trust and technology adoption of high importance. However research revealed that the level of trust and technology adoption was lower than the importance, presenting gaps in most of the factors of trust and technology adoption. Across both these industries there were eight critical gaps for the factors of trust which were ‘Information sharing’, ‘Reliability’, ‘Timeliness’, ‘Customisation’, ‘Work standards’, ‘Shared values’, ‘POS information’ and ‘Honesty and Integrity’. There were three critical gaps identified in technology adoption, which were ‘Relative advantage’, ‘Traceability’ and ‘Trialability’. The conclusions from this research for the managers of the sectors in the Australian agribusiness supply chain are (a) there is a need to assess the differences between the level and importance of trust and technology adoption to identify the critical gaps in the supply chain and (b) critical gaps in trust and technology adoption need to be eliminated or diminished to improve Australian agribusiness supply chains. From a theoretical perspective this research provides managers in the Australian agribusiness supply chain with a framework for creating strategies to eliminate or diminish the critical gaps for the factors of trust and technology and improve the cohesion between supply chain partners.