*2.3. A Theoretical Lens for Supply Chain Agility*

From Section 2, supply chain agility seen as strategic agility requires the competence to manage, sense changes and mobilize resources to adjust to change caused by strategic discontinuities, business environment and disruptions. Thus, supply chain agility could be considered a dynamic capability, since the literature defines dynamic capability as the ability to "integrate, build and reconfigure internal and external competencies to address rapidly changing environments" (Teece, [61] (p. 516)). Do et al. [41] present research that has employed dynamic capability as a theoretical lens to enhance understanding of strategic supply chain agility [45,48,53,61,62].

The framework to sense the required supply chain agility prerequisites and redesign variables as discussed in Section 2.2 has been sparsely researched and has left a gap in the measurement of supply chain components. Since supply chain agility as strategic agility is a management decision and Mentzer et al. [63] proposed a broader and generalised definition for supply chain management as the systematic, strategic coordination of business functions and organisation tactics across actors within the supply chain, ultimately for improving the long-term performance of the supply chain actors and the supply chain as a whole. In addition, from the system dynamics view and the "logistical concept", a supply chain scenario consists of a managed system, managing system, information and organization [64].

Therefore, to ensure the application of supply chain agility and to implement it, there are identified variables in the supply chain that could be redesigned to achieve the required agile configuration of the supply chain. These are the supply chain redesign variables. A supply chain redesign variable is defined as a management decision variable at the strategic, tactical or operational level that determines the setting of one of the descriptive elements of the managed, managing, information system or organization structure [49]. Vorst [46] (p. 64) classifies these redesign variables in a supply chain as shown in Table 1.

Additionally, Yawson and Aguiar [65,66] developed elements of the components that will require supply chain agility in developing countries' horticultural export supply chains based on the redesign variables in Table 1 and is presented in Table 2.

With the disruptive change due to the COVID-19 pandemic in fresh produce supply chains, therefore, dealing with uncertainty denotes whether or when a certain event occurs. However, dealing with uncertainty requires evaluating the implications if certain events were to occur. In the case of the fresh produce supply chain, strategic agility would be the supply chain actor organizations or chain-wide supply chain response. Generally, for fresh produce supply chains, horticultural producers adopt and develop various strategies in

order to survive and develop [51]. These strategies are based on three key aspects: (1) organisational innovation; (2) production innovation; and (3) product innovation [67].

**Table 1.** Classification of Supply Chain Redesign Variables. Adapted from Vorst (2000) [46] (p. 64).


**Table 2.** Typology of Fresh Produce Horticultural Export Supply Chain Elements of the Components Requiring Agility.



Therefore, we adopt the framework by Yawson and Aguiar [65] and Yawson and Aguiar [66] to identify components and elements in a developing countries' horticultural export supply chain that required agility due to the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is to provide insight into supply chain evaluation in the horticultural export development context to enable the building of the critical responsive strategy required to compete. In the framework, the external and internal environment are conceptualised to affect the four theoretical (logistical concept) components of the supply chain, the managed system (infrastructure), managing system (management), information system and organisation system. The framework is shown in Figure 2. The relationships of the agility drivers to the various components of the supply chain are presented, ensuring the framework account for internal and external environmental factors (politics, economics, society and technology) [68] and also four agility dimensions: cooperating to enhance competitiveness, enriching the customer, mastering change and uncertainty, and leveraging the impact of people and information [69]. Additionally, the framework also accounts for companies as part of a network, showing the affected and the level of agility of the supply chain [70]. From the framework in Figure 2, the change factors relate to the following components of the supply chain elements:


**Figure 2.** Conceptual Framework for Supply Chain Agility Analysis. **Figure 2.** Conceptual Framework for Supply Chain Agility Analysis.

• **The managed system:** The supply chain actors with specified roles in the supply chain and their required infrastructure [71], which can be viewed from three levels: network design, facility design, and resource characteristics. • **The managing system:** This component plans, controls and coordinates the business processes in the supply chain to ensure the realization of the logistical objectives within the limitations of the supply chain configuration and strategic supply chain The framework operates in two steps: Firstly, it identifies the elements of the components of the supply chain that requires agility by identifying elements of component that actors of the chain find difficult in meeting or changing to meet in the supply chain. This is done through a questionnaire sent to actors in the supply chain with questions on the elements of the components shown in Table 2. Secondly, the questionnaire is then analysed for the Agility gap using an index interpreted and interventions prescribed.

objectives [72]. • **The information system:** This component provides and coordinates the information for the managing system for decision-making and control of actions. • **The organisation structure:** This component comprises two main elements [73]: the establishment of tasks and their coordination to realize set objectives. • **Agility drivers:** These are internal or external factors in the business environment influencing the required level of business agility. Zhang and Sharifi [55] (p. 498) define "agility drivers as changes/pressures from the business environment that necessitate a company to search for new ways of running its business in order to maintain The Agility Gap Index is adapted from the work of van Oosterhout et al. [70]. They developed a business Agility Gap index for which they argue that if businesses find it difficult to cope with major changes which go beyond their normal flexibility, they are termed to have faced an agility gap. The interview instrument for the framework interrogates strategic agility with a two-stage question approach. The first step asks the participant "To what extent are changes in the current business environment affecting supply chain elements in your business?" (Then, a list of the elements of the components follows). The items are scored on a Likert-5point scale anchored on 1 (Very low) to 5 (Very high). For items representing processes that score 4 or 5 (high and very high extent of

• **Specification of redesign variables (capabilities):** These are the essential capabilities

• **Agility gaps:** Agility gaps arise when the firm has difficulty in acquiring the level of agility to respond to business environment changes in a timely and cost-effective

its competitiveness".

manner.

ness environment changes.

change, respectively) a follow-up question. Therefore, whole business entities, supply change actors and specific supply change processes could be termed to have an agility gap. The changes required are termed business change and the factors causing these are business environment change factors. In the second step, the degree of the impact due to the business environment change factor is measured with a follow-up question in the survey instrument for items representing processes that score 4 or 5 (high and very high extent of change, respectively) on a Likert-5point scale asking the participant to indicate the level of difficulty in having to cope with the change. The responses to the follow-up questions are also scored on a Likert-5point scale of difficulty anchored on 1 (Very low) to 5 (Very high). These are then computed as an Agility gap index score with a percentage. Therefore, Agility gap index scores can be computed for elements of the supply change components, an aggregate of the components in supply chains and whole supply chains [65,66]. The results are interpreted according to a scale developed by Oosterhout et al. [70]. The agility gap index calculated as a ratio in percentage is scaled to a number between 0% (no Agility gap at all) and 100% (largest Agility gap possible). These are classified as 'most urgent' gaps (ratios ≥ 60%), 'high urgency' gaps (ratios > 50% and < 60%), 'lower level of urgency' gaps (ratios > 40% and ≤ 50%), 'Normal' gaps (ratios < 40%) and 'No Gap at All' (ratios = 0) using a scale by van Oosterhout et al. [70]. The higher the agility gap index ratio percentage, the more urgent the agility gap. According to Oosterhout et al. [70] if businesses find it difficult to cope with major changes, which go beyond their normal level of flexibility, they are faced with an agility gap and need intervention. Therefore, the supply chain agility methodological framework has the potential as a potential panacea to identify components of the horticulture export supply chain for the development of a responsive strategy to resolve fresh produce export chain challenges in a turbulent (COVID-19) business environment.
