ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF SELECTED SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT FACTORS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF WOOD INDUSTRY CLUSTERS IN THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA

The purpose of this study is to determine the importance of supply chain management (SCM) in Croatian wood industry clusters by investigating the relations between information technology, partner relationships, the value added process and supply chain performance as well as the relation between supply chain performance and the competitive advantage of members within the clusters. The study included 20.8% of the companies being part of Croatian wood clusters. The first phase involved a survey among these companies. The collected data was then subjected to factor analysis to identify supply chain management factors. The last phase involved a multiple regression analysis to test the impact and contribution of individual factors on supply chain performance as well as the impact of supply chain performance on competitive advantage. It has been established that only the partner relationship has proven to be relevant, while the contributions of the value added process and information technology have not. The absence of these two important factors suggests that cluster members are not functionally linked and that clusters are primarily established on geographic principle. The findings indicate a need to change the management paradigm in Croatian wood industry clusters by putting greater focus on the functional rather than geographical integration of members, which is still dominantly present as the basic criterion for establishing clusters in transitional countries.