Supply Chain Activities and Financial Performance: The Role of Strategic Cost Management

The present study investigates the role of strategic cost management as an intermediary variable on the relationship between the supply chain activities, and the financial performance improvement. The improvement of financial performance is selected as the dependent variable, the supply chain activities and the strategic cost management are considered as the main independent variables whilst the financial structure and the size of company are considered as control variables. The research is an applied purpose research, based on a data-survey retrospective research design and uses a descriptive-inductive inference method. From a list of selected companies of Tehran Stock Exchange, 165 companies were picked by the simple random method and top management survey was used to measure the supply chain activities and strategic cost management. Applying the structural equation model after diagnostic tests shows that strategic cost management has a positive and significant effect on the relationship between the supply chain activities in different dimensions and on improving the financial performance with different metrics.