Measuring supply chain finance: a study of scale development and validation in the emerging market context
Abstract
Purpose
Financing remains a serious concern for firms and is considered the main hurdle in the growth and development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Recently, a new stream of financing (SCF; supply chain finance) has emerged to meet the financing issues of SMEs. Therefore, measuring SCF is essential to support SMEs’ operations. This study aims to develop and validate the SCF scale based on extant literature.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a mixed-method approach, this study recruited different samples of SME entrepreneurs to confirm the internal consistency, assess construct validity and check the item structure of the SCF scale in AMOS.
Findings
The outcomes of confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated the six factors of SCF (inventory financing, working capital optimization, reverse financing, fixed assets financing, logistics financing and order cycle financing) spread over 21 items. An interitem solid structure of the SCF scale offers invaluable contributions to the supply chain management literature.
Practical implications
This research supports SME entrepreneurs to obtain secure financing at the best cost, mitigating the risk of default, supporting the buyers’ payment terms, providing early payment to suppliers and strengthening the firm’s value chains. SMEs can obtain financing per their requirements to support their operational business processes. Moreover, SMEs can plan, manage and control finance-related transactional activities by correctly identifying financing solutions.
Originality/value
The present study contributes to SCM literature by developing and validating the SCF scale. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that redefined SCF and identified its six dimensions.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding: The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and publication of this article.
Conflicting interests: There is no conflict of interest among the authors.
Consent to participate: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Citation
Ali, Z. (2024), "Measuring supply chain finance: a study of scale development and validation in the emerging market context", Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JBIM-07-2023-0427
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited