Abstract
This study aims to determine the effect that human capital and key competitive drivers, such as quality, agility and cost, have on firm performance, and whether this effect is related to outsourcing strategies. We also aim to determine whether firm size is relevant in explaining such relationships. The design uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypothesized relationships for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large organizations, using a customized survey completed by 404 companies located in the agro-industrial region of Valle del Cauca, Colombia. Human capital is essential for effective implementation of operational agility, quality and cost management strategies, which in turn impact company performance through effective outsourcing strategies. These relationships, however, are not the same in all companies of different sizes. In particular, in the region studied, outsourcing practices appear to be scarce in SMEs. The study focuses on a region with infrastructure and connectivity limitations, which hinder or undermine potentially valuable outsourced logistics (3PL) strategies. This study contributes to theory and practice on supply chain competitiveness by expanding current knowledge on the role of some key competitive drivers and human capital in organizational performance, highlighting regional specificities that could hinder firm competitiveness, and presenting a novel quantitative methodology, which is rarely used for these topics.