The role of absorptive capacity in driving supply chain quality integration: insights from evolving and mature pharmaceutical supply chains

Purpose This study investigates the impact of absorptive capacity (AC) on supply chain quality integration (SCQI) operational performance in evolving and mature pharmaceutical supply chains. Design/methodology/approach Structural equation modelling and PROCESS analysis were adopted to analyse the data of 148 companies from evolving pharmaceutical supply chains and 102 companies from mature pharmaceutical supply chains. Findings The results demonstrated significant differences between the two supply chains in leveraging AC for performance improvements. Mature pharmaceutical supply chains exhibited stronger internal quality integration, leading to improved quality implementation across both suppliers and customers, and in turn, enhancing operational performance in terms of quality, cost, delivery and flexibility dimensions. Conversely, evolving pharmaceutical supply chains struggled to fully utilise AC, with limited cost and delivery performance impacts. However, evolving pharmaceutical supply chains showed effective customer integration, improving product quality. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature by highlighting the importance of a series of mediations in the relationship between AC and operational performance, emphasising the need to assimilate knowledge internally before attempting to integrate supplier and customer quality. Additionally, it is the only study to date that provides a comparison of AC's effectiveness on SCQI in terms of evolving and mature pharmaceutical supply chains. The study offers valuable insights, showing that evolving pharmaceutical supply chains can learn from mature counterparts, while mature pharmaceutical supply chains can better understand the dynamics of AC and SCQI in evolving supply chains. These findings are important as evolving supply chains contribute greatly to the global pharmaceutical market.