The impact of culture on inter and intra organization supply chains at Nissan

This paper examines how national and organizational culture influences supply chain management. To do this it reports on the case of Nissan Motor Company and finds that Japanese national culture had a significant impact on Nissan’s inter organizational supply chain. In addition to this, national culture influenced organizational culture which had a substantive impact on Nissan’s intra organizational supply chain. This article also analyses how Nissan was able to integrate its internal supply chain through culture change that successfully introduced Anglo business and human resource management practices into a Confusion Asian culture. It concludes that Nissan\u27s organization culture had a greater impact on Nissan’s performance than its country of origin. In doing so it counters the resource based proposition that a misfit between national culture and management practice reduces effectiveness and the collorary that a fit between the two is a source of competitive advantage. These findings have implications for international supply chain and human resource management, particularly in high context countries which characterize many emerging economies that are of increasing relevance as supply chains globalize