The third antecedent we address pertains to proactiveness, or firms’ tendency to be
first to come up with proactive innovations that beat competitors to the punch
(Miller, 1983). For firms that engage in supply chain activities, proactiveness refers
to their ability to integrate supply chain information and shape their environment by
introducing new products, technologies, and administrative techniques. This approach
entails seizing new opportunities in the environment and taking preemptive action
in response to any perceived opportunity (Miller and Friesen, 1978). As Lumpkin and
Dess (1996) explain, a proactive firm seizes new opportunities and takes action to
exploit them (Venkatraman, 1989). To some extent, proactivity occurs when boundary
spanners offer transparency to decision makers, which affects entrepreneurial and
learning actions within the supply chain (Ireland and Webb, 2007). Hence, we
propose: