Assessing the impact of the manufacturing executive's role on business performance through strategic alignment

Many researchers over time have stressed the importance of incorporating the manufacturing perspective in the formulation of business strategy. Prior work in this area has tended to focus primarily on the involvement of the manufacturing executive in strategic decision making processes, while relatively little attention has been given to the level of influence enjoyed by the manufacturing executives. This study jointly examines the role of both influence and involvement in achieving better business performance, which we posit is expected to occur through alignment between the organizational and manufacturing strategies rather than directly. A research model based on procedural justice and strategic information management literature is proposed to represent this phenomenon. Structural equation modeling is used to empirically test the research model and its related hypothesis on the basis of data collected from 202 senior manufacturing executives representing mid to large sized firms from diverse industry groups across the US. In addition, interviews with a sub-sample of respondents are used to further explore the contextual nature of these relationships. The results indicate that involvement and influence are indeed two different, but highly related, aspects of the manufacturing executive s role. The interviews revealed numerous differences between the two with respect to achieving each and individual benefits derived from them. As expected, both involvement and influence are important determinants of strategy alignment with influence appearing to play a more substantive role. More importantly, it is this alignment that affects business performance. Implications of our findings for improving manufacturing practice, along with possible avenues for future research directions in this area, are also provided. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.