Strategic Sourcing an Antecedent of Supply Chain Resilience in Manufacturing Firms in Kenya

Supply chain resilience can enable manufacturing firms to overcome disruptions and continually transform them to meet the changing needs and expectations of its customers, shareholders and other stakeholders. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the influence of strategic sourcing on supply chain resilience in manufacturing firms in Kenya. The study adopted cross-sectional survey design using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The target population was 613 manufacturing firms in Nairobi and its surroundings, who were members of Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) in 2015. The study used stratified random sampling to pick a sample size of 62 manufacturing firms which represented 14 industrial sectors in manufacturing firms. Data was collected using questionnaire. Descriptive and inferential statistics was used aided by Statistical Packages for Social Sciences version 24 to compute percentages of respondents’ answers. The study found out that strategic sourcing was significant predictor of supply chain resilience. The study recommends that it would be appropriate for management to adopt strategic sourcing approach when procuring strategic or critical items as strategic sourcing this would create supply chain resilience in the manufacturing firms. Likewise, the study recommends managers for manufacturing firms to adopt multiple sourcing in order to create reliable delivery and various criteria of selecting suppliers like financial strength, quality of products, past performance, capacity production requirements and technology.