Environmental Dynamism and Supply Chain Responsiveness Nexus: Do Organisational Improvisation and Supply Chain Orientation Matter?

ABSTRACT The crucial role of environmental dynamism (ED) in achieving supply chain responsiveness (SCR) has become a controversial topic in extant literature. However, despite several empirical studies on environmental dynamism and supply chain responsiveness, inconsistent findings and underexplored areas leave supply chain managers less informed about how environmental dynamism contributes to supply chain responsiveness. Also, prior research on environmental dynamism has applied various theories individually or simultaneously, but they may not capture the complexity in their relationships. Drawing on the structure–conduct–performance and contingency theories, this study proposes a moderated mediation model to examine the effects of environmental dynamism on supply chain responsiveness. This study further explores the mediating role of organisational improvisation (OI) and the moderating effect of supply chain orientation (SCO). This study employed a structured survey to gather cross‐sectional data from 335 supply chain partners of Ghanaian firms. The study employed symmetric covariance‐based structural equation modelling (CB‐SEM), SPSS (Version 25) for Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression, Andy Hayes' PROCESS Macro (Version 3.3), and asymmetric fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyse the data. The findings reveal that environmental dynamism affects supply chain responsiveness, and the effect improves when organisational improvisation mediates the relationship. Furthermore, the relationship changes under varying conditions of supply chain orientation, such that the higher the supply chain orientation, the higher the positive relationship between environmental dynamism and supply chain responsiveness via organisational improvisation. This study recommends that managers in dynamic environments should have a supply chain orientation to recruit creative individuals capable of devising strategies to utilise organisational resources to respond to dynamic environmental conditions, particularly in response to market needs and opportunities.