6.1 Limitations and future research
Despite the many benefits associated with the use of objective secondary data, a well-recognized limitation associated with
the use of secondary data is that the researcher is constrained by the availability of data. An obvious limitation of this
research study is that the number of top SCM performer firms utilized in the testing of the study hypotheses is relatively
small. We recognize that testing more exemplar firms against their respective industry averages would have been preferable and suggest that doing so may have yielded more robust findings. In addition, the firms under examination comprise only large US-based companies in a relatively limited number of industries. We must therefore acknowledge that sampling characteristics associated with the use of secondary data sources limit the generalizability of the study findings.
Another limitation of our research study is that the analyses do not consider specific moderating influences. Although
correlations between the variables tested are relatively high, the possibility still exists that multiple factors not tested in our analyses may influence the proposed relationships. Further evidence is therefore required to prove the existence of
causality between the variables examined in this study.Identifying moderating variables provides scope for wider
future testing of additional hypotheses that relate to the core issue of the relationship between SCM and overall firm
performance.