Influence of human capital on healthcare agility and healthcare supply chain performance

Purpose Health-care supply chains must focus on efficient deployment of resources for ensuring optimal supply chain performance. With efficient supply chain (SC) performance, health-care entities would be able to address their patients’ requirements with great speed. This is the essence of health-care agility. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to focus on developing health-care agility through human capital, that is, innovative idea generation capabilities and specialised knowledge possessed by the firm employees. Because information technology (IT) capabilities play a dominant role in information exchange crucial to supply chain operations; the study considered the moderating role of three IT capabilities, viz. outside-in, spanning and inside-out IT capabilities on human capital and health-care SC performance association, and on health-care supply chain performance and health-care agility association. Design/methodology/approach Because the constructs used in the study mainly deals with issues specifically related to hospitals and their associated supply chains, the study collected perceptual responses from senior hospital managers. Perceptual responses were received through face-to-face interviews with 212 hospital managers working in different hospitals. The collected responses were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. Findings Findings suggests positive influences of human capital on health-care SC performance and health-care agility. Furthermore, health-care SC performance was also found to result in enhanced health-care agility. The study further revealed positive moderation of outside-in, spanning and inside-out IT capabilities on human capital and health-care SC performance association and on health-care SC performance and health-care agility association. Originality/value The study addressed the importance of human capital in providing faster services to patients (i.e. agility) in health-care supply chains through improved SC performance. Furthermore, the study addressed the importance of different IT capabilities that enhance the importance of human capital in providing efficient and faster services through efficient SC performance.