IS COMPANY PERFORMANCE INFLUENCED BY SUPPLY CHAIN ORIENTATION? INSIGHT FROM HALAL SMES IN KAZAKHSTAN

: This research investigates the relationship between company performance and supply chain orientation elements in halal small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The advised supply chain orientation model combines three elements to identify company performance, i


INTRODUCTION
There is a growing interest of scholars to study the relationship between company performance (CP) and various aspects of supply chain (SC) management (Thakkar, Kanda, & Deshmukh, 2012;Lee, 2008). SC management is considered an essential factor to define CP (Kirchoff, Tate, & Mollenkopf, 2016). It was previously shown that the success of SC management was highly dependent on the extent of the collaboration between the SC stakeholders (Ab . The organizational capability to consolidate various goals of their SC stakeholders through fostering good business relationships is essential for organizational performance. This capability has been designated in the role of 'SC orientation.' For SC orientation's value creation, the SC stakeholders are required to invest their capabilities, know-how, and resources to succeed in organizational performance and meet the needs of their consumers (Mentzer et al., 2001). Thus, the value creation process of SC orientation is the crucial foundation for organizational stability.
The organizations have been prompted to reorient their operations towards halalcertified products because of the increasing orders of halal goods (Abdul Rahman et al., 2013). The term 'halal' means a product/process created/performed following Islamic law (a.k.a. Sharia). Currently, the profitable halal market provides companies with the potential to penetrate this emerging global market (Ab Rahman et al., 2015;Abd-Razak and Abdul-Talib, 2013;Ab Rahman et al., 2019). As an illustration, the international business in the halal industry reached 1.29 billion USD in 2016, and it is estimated to increase to 2.54 billion USD in 2019 (Rajabzadeh and Ireland 2011;Ab Rahman et al. 2019;Zailani et al. 2015;Abdul Rahman et al. 2013). Nevertheless, in general, halal firms are SMEs with relatively few resources, especially in financial, knowledge, and workforce skills aspects (Zailani et al., 2015;Salavou et al., 2004). Therefore, to win a superior business position in a growing halal market, SMEs need to develop and adopt a strategic approach to SC orientation. This strategy allows halal companies to concentrate on their capacity and resources.
Furthermore, the SC orientation's realization confirms that the companies fulfill the Sharia law's requirements because if the stakeholders of SC do not adhere to certain conditions, the halal status could be put down. In addition, previous studies of Khan and Haleem (2017), Ali et al. (2017), and Ab  indicated halal validation as vitality important for SMEs in fitting into the expanding halal market thereby ensuring their sustainable operations. Although SC orientation is vital in the potentially beneficial halal market, the available research works signified that SC orientation is not standard among halal SMEs. For example, the extent to which SC orientation influences CP in the perspective of halal SMEs is still unknown because this issue has not been considered yet. In this regard, the current research proposes to develop a framework showing the linkage between SC orientation and CP to facilitate the use of SC orientation by halal SMEs. The SC orientation aspects examined in this study include top management support, company's commitment and company's credibility. The research questions are as follows: • RQ1: Is top management support positively linked to CP in the perspective of halal SMEs in Kazakhstan? • RQ2: Does the company's commitment to its SC stakeholders enhance the CP of halal SMEs in Kazakhstan? • RQ3: Does the company's credibility to its SC management enhance the CP of halal SMEs in Kazakhstan?
Up to the present time, there is no research devoted to the influence of the SC orientation and its certain aspects towards CP among halal SMEs (Muhammad et al., 2019). Thus, the current article filled the gap by delivering insight into the relationship between the three aspects of SC orientation and CP among halal SMEs. Moreover, based on an in-depth literature review, this study is an initial effort to examine the effects of SC orientation aspects on CP in Kazakh context. The authors searched the Scopus database in the last decade (2012-2022) with keyword "supply chain orientation" AND "company performance/firm performance" and found 62 articles but only 11 were relevant with SC orientation and none was conducted in the perspective of halal SMEs and in Kazakhstan. Besides, this study is the first attempt to integrate halal credibility in halal industry, which has never been examined before. Therefore, this article is an innovative study made up for the absence of literature by examining the impact of SC orientation procedures towards CP in the context of halal SMEs in a Post-Soviet country.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESIS
Muslim people are restricted from consuming non-halal food, which is also highlighted by Zailani et al. (2015) and Tieman et al. (2012). Besides, over the past few years, the non-Muslim customers' demanding inquiries regarding halal-labeled goods have increased in the interest of the product's high-quality assurance (Ab Rahman et al., 2019). Moreover, it should also be noted that a significant number of stakeholders of halal SC in production, logistics, retailing, or services are composed of non-Muslim organizations (Zailani et al., 2015;Tieman 2015). The product's halal status depends on the entire SC, not simply the production activities (Abdul- Talib and Abd-Razak 2013). A company needs to protect the halal status of their products and the credibility of this status by maintaining that all the workers in SC strictly fulfill the halal requirements. To reach this goal, firms need to integrate SC orientation into their operations. Scholars (Kirchoff et al., 2016;Mello and Stank 2005) defined SC orientation as an enterprise's recognition of its strategic and systematic activity management identified with the pass of different products plus services via SC. Min et al. (2007) define SC orientation as the 'internal philosophy,' as SC management is helpful to coordinate the dependence of SC stakeholders on each other to improve productivity. The research works of Mentzer and Min (2004), Esper et al. (2010), Miocevic and Crnjak-Karanovic (2012), and Mentzer et al. (2001) show some evidence concerning the effect of SC orientation implementation on CP. Nevertheless, Esper and his co-authors (2010) have pointed to the need to assimilate the upstream (such as customer needs) and downstream (such as marketing) activities in SC.
Scholars introduced five essential components of SC orientation, i.e., organizational compatibility (ORG), credibility (CRD), commitment (CMM), top management support (MSP), and trust (Min and Mentzer, 2004). Trust is determined as the company's confidence that it can rely upon the SC stakeholder (Dimitriadis and Kyrezis 2011). For halal SMEs, trust is expressed in the company's assurance in similar SC members to maintain and secure its halal status while improving CP. Second, researchers (Mentzer et al. 2001;Kirchoff et al., 2016) signified that MSP stands for senior management resoluteness to assure that the company endorses robust business relations with SC members. Third, CMM is denoted as the constant desire of SC stakeholders to preserve their work relations over a long period (Stanko et al., 2007). Fourth, credibility implies the SC stakeholders' trustworthiness in reaching the same business objectives (Muhammad et al., 2009). Last, organizational compatibility refers to the resemblance in meeting the organizational goals of all the SC stakeholders and placing focus on the mission and vision (Mello and Stank, 2005).
A comprehensive search of the relevant literature yielded several articles in which one or more of these SC orientation components were studied (Table 1). The current study selected these research works because they represent the most recent investigations regarding the effect of SC orientation from the perspective of SMEs. Tranfield et al. (2003) pointed out that the literature selection relevant to the research context is crucial in reviewing the literature. Within the chosen articles, all but one article studied MSP and CMM, whereas only two articles examined CRD. The link between MSP and CP has been extensively assessed; however, its role within the halal SMEs environment has not been set (Zailani et al., 2015). Besides, Salavou et al. (2004) proposed that SMEs differ from larger enterprises E-ISSN: 2502-0633, P-ISSN: 2502-4647 http://jurnal.unissula.ac.id/index.php/ijibe DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30659/ijibe.7.1.1-15 in having smaller assets and not experienced management teams, particularly in upcoming markets. In addition, managers in halal companies may find it challenging to ensure that SC stakeholders protect the halal status (Zailani et al., 2015). Moreover, it was pointed out that the ineffectiveness of the senior management in creating common business goals for the entire SC is one of the key obstacles to the efficient delivery of customer value, thus impacting CP (Lee, 2008). Hence, the first hypothesis can be expected as: H1: Top management support is positively linked to CP in the perspective of halal SMEs. Next, SC stakeholders' shared commitment is vital to enhance CP (Sanchez-Hernandez and Miranda, 2011). The commitment of the company and the SC members can be strengthened by arranging quality improvement programs for suppliers (Min and Mentzer, 2004) or designating the business well-being of the SC stakeholders as the most important (Ab Talib and Ai Chin, 2018). The company's commitment towards the SC stakeholders is likely to enhance the operational performance (Stanko et al., 2007;Chomvilailuk and Butcher, 2014). Though, the association between a company's commitment and CP in the perspective of halal SMEs is still under debate (Ali et al., 2017;Zailani et al., 2017). Thus, it can be hypothesized that: H2: The company's commitment to its SC stakeholders enhances the CP of halal SMEs.
Scholars continue to argue how does the company's credibility affects its productivity. Scholars have offered a nomological association between these two factors and examined the impact of corporate credibility on CP from a marketing perspective (Saeidi et al., 2015). In addition, credibility was also studied as a component of SC orientation (Ho et al., 2018;Kirchoff et al., 2016). These research investigations confirm the validity of the connection between credibility and performance. From this point of view, it is plausible that credibility adds value to halal SMEs. Hence, it can be hypothesized that:

H3: The company's credibility to its SC management enhances the CP of halal SMEs
Three aspects of SC orientation are hypothesized based on the literature review to be vital factors influencing CP in the perspective of halal SMEs.

RESEARCH METHOD
For collecting information and checking the hypothesized relationships, the authors used a closed-ended form of survey questions. The questionnaire is considered a convenient E-ISSN: 2502-0633, P-ISSN: 2502-4647 http://jurnal.unissula.ac.id/index.php/ijibe DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30659/ijibe.7.1.1-15 survey instrument (Mariel et al., 2021) which can also be applied to maintain the confidential information of respondents. The questionnaire of this study is composed of five parts: (i) sample profile; (ii) MSP; (iii) CMM; (iv) CRD; and (v) CP (the dependent variable). The items used in this survey were taken from previous studies retaining the validity of content (Min and Mentzer 2004). Specifically, the items for each section were adapted from the following studies: (i) CP (Theodosiou et al., 2012); (ii) CRD (Acar et al., 2017); (iii) CMM (Sanchez-Hernandez and Miranda, 2011); and (iv) MSP (Miocevic and Crnjak-Karanovic 2012;Min and Mentzer 2004).
The survey questions are generally designed as follows: the authors invited the responders for indicating their agreement or disagreement levels on the Likert scale basis in 5 points, namely 1 =firmly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither disagree nor agree, 4 = agree, 5 = firmly agree. The CP gauge is SC orientation red as: 5 = highly improved; 4 = improved; 3 = no improvement; 2 = deteriorated; and 1 = very deteriorated. The scales chosen for the research are using similar scales employed in previously published works by scholars Crnjak-Karanovic and Miocevic (2012), Acar et al. (2017), and Mentzer and Min (2004). All the questions went through the preliminary test by an academic professional to confirm their readability and clarity (McCusker and Gunaydin, 2015), and a few small changes were made before the distribution of the questionnaires.

Sample Profile
The sampling setting in the research comprises halal SMEs in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan's halal industry is flourishing, with hundreds of new halal firms operated in recent years, and consumption of halal food alone has reached 3 billion USD annually, or 13.6 percent of the 22 billion USD spent on food and beverage per year (Salama, 2020). This study's data is acquired from AHIK, the Association Halal Industry of Kazakhstan, a halal certification body. A total of 511 halal SMEs were listed in Kazakhstan, and this number is reckoned to be a small sample (Zailani et al., 2015). According to the Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2015, a firm is categorized as SMEs if it has 15-250 employees and an annual turnover of 0.21-21.5 million USD (Kapparov, 2019).
To increase the responsiveness, the authors chose an online questionnaire method called "Google Form," and the link was sent by email to the business leaders and purchasing managers. The interactive web-based questionnaires are effective regarding delivery and cost (Evans and Mathur, 2018). Likewise, the interactive e-survey allows for automatic authentication, whereas the cloud storage system stores the data of the questionnaires (Silverman et al., 2018).
The online surveys were spread to 511 SMEs, and 272 were returned in the agreed time frame (January 2021 to March 2021); the completion rate was 53.2%. To gather the information needed for this research, the study applied the purposive sampling technique (Abd Rahman et al., 2015). The purposive sampling method has been formerly employed in related publications (Crnjak-Karanovic and Miocevic, 2012;Theodosiou et al., 2012;Ho et al., 2018).

Analysis Strategy
Due to the small size of the study population, the PLS-SEM structural equation modeling was reckoned as the proper method to test the hypotheses of the satisfactorily wellknown theory in the research by Hair et al. (2012). According to research recommendations of Henseler et al. (2016) and Hair et al. (2012), PLS is employed to estimate causal links included in an underlying variable that is directly controlled by measurement items, while SEM is employed to examine the causal links among variables (Hair et al. 2012). This study uses the Smart PLS version 3.0 statistical program for examining the gathered data.
Concerning the research population, a specific rule of 10 was employed in this study E-ISSN: 2502-0633, P-ISSN: 2502 as Willaby et al. (2015) advise that the minimum amount of items required for PLS-SEM is ten times the independent variable on the structural path. Hence, in this research, a population size of 271 is above the lowest limit needed for this analysis. Nevertheless, to guarantee the data's sampling adequacy, the Kaiser Meyer Olkin test (KMO) and Bartlett's test of sphericity (BTS) are done employing the SPSS software.
According to Hulland (1999), as PLS-SEM includes two phases, the analysis was first performed to establish a measurement model, whereas the next phase included the structural model's estimation. In the first stage, the validity and reliability of each item are measured to guarantee that the items employed in the model were valid and reliable (Astrachan et al., 2014). After completing this stage, the authors estimated the path between the independent and dependent variables to determine their predictive ability and significance to measure the proposed structural model (Zailani et al., 2015).

FINDINGS
Before conducting PLS-SEM, the KMO and BTS tests are employed. It has been previously advised that the minimum threshold value for KMO was 0.6 (George and Mallery 2019). In the research, the KMO value acquired is 0.87, implying the adequacy of the data for further analyses. According to Hair et al. (2012), KMO outcome is reckoned 'meritorious' between 0.80 and 0.89. Besides, BTS is significant (p<0.001) with an estimated chi-square value of 964.14, signifying that the coefficient is not zero. The outcomes of BTS and KMO are shown in Table 3. For assessing the items' discriminant validity, the study conducted a factor analysis. Two items (CMM2 plus CP3) are deleted as an outcome of this examination as their factor loading values are low (<0.6) (Zailani et al., 2015). The residual items comprise four research variables that are coded as MSP (MSP1, MSP2, MSP3, TM4, and MSP5), CMM (CMM1, CMM3, CMM4, CMM5, and CMM6), CRD (CRD1, CRD2, CRD3, CRD4, and CRD5), and CP (CP1, CP2, CP4, CP5, and CP6).
After the preliminary screening procedure and elimination of the two items with low factor loadings, the convergent validity of the remaining items is evaluated by computing the Average Variance Extract (AVE) and Composite Reliability (CR) (Large and Thomsen, 2011). Khan and Mohsin (2017) propose that convergent validity is an essential feature in structural modeling to ensure that each item in a particular construct measure a single conception, whereby the threshold value is 0.7 concerning the CR (Nunnally, 1975) yet 0.5 regarding the AVE, as recommended by Larcker and Fornell (1981) and Henseler and coauthors (2015). Additionally, the item's reliability is checked using Cronbach's alpha (ἀ) based on the research of Nunnally (1975). Agan et al. (2016) state that Cronbach's alpha value must exceed 0.5. The values of AVE, CR, and ἀ were higher than the threshold values (Table 4), thus confirming the presence of convergent validity and that the items measured E-ISSN: 2502-0633, P-ISSN: 2502-4647 http://jurnal.unissula.ac.id/index.php/ijibe DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30659/ijibe.7.1.1-15 the intended construct.  (2007) presented, multicollinearity is also examined in the proposed model using the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF). Multiple regression is commonly employed to assess the VIF, in which if the values of VIF were below the threshold value of 5.0, then no correlation exists between the constructs. A value of less than 5.0 is considered satisfactory (Yoo et al., 2014). Hence, as the evaluations executed in the first phase of the PLS-SEM/ measurement analysis showed, the offered model exceeded the requirements for structural analysis.
In performing structural analysis, for evaluating the significance of the connection between the constructs, the authors applied a bootstrapping technique, where 5000 subsamples originated from a sample size of 271 are examined to produce significance values in PLS and t-statistics (Awang et al., 2015). Structural analysis of the model indicated a significant linkage (p<0.001) between MSP and CP, hence supporting H1. Thus, it is clear that the senior management support significantly influences CP in halal SMEs. Similarly, there was a significant link between CMM and CP (p<0.001) as proposed in H2, therefore specifying the significant effect of the commitment of stakeholders in the SC on the CP in halal SMEs. As a final point, the connection between CRD and CP was likewise revealed to be significant (p<0.001), hence validating the acceptance of H3. Hence, SC credibility is mandatory in establishing CP within halal SMEs. These findings furnish statistical evidence that SC's credibility in halal SMEs is needed to protect the halal grade of the products. The PLS-SEM analysis was carried out for increasing the variance extracted (R 2 ), and it was indicated that the R 2 of MSP, CMM, and CRD in verifying CP is 0.682 (68.2%). The data E-ISSN: 2502-0633, P-ISSN: 2502 9 Vol. 7 No. 1 March 2022 assessment outcomes of the structural framework are displayed in Table 5.

DISCUSSION
This study attempts to answer three research questions mentioned earlier as follows: • RQ1: Is top management support (MSP) positively linked to CP in the perspective of halal SMEs in Kazakhstan? • RQ2: Does company's commitment to its SC stakeholders (CMM) enhance the CP of halal SMEs in Kazakhstan? • RQ3: Does company's credibility to its SC management (CRD) enhance the CP of halal SMEs in Kazakhstan? The findings from the data analysis provide the answers to these RQs with "yes" as the answers to all RQs. The findings confirm that the three hypotheses proposed in this study are supported, thus indicating that MSP, CMM, and CRD have a significant effect on CP of halal SMEs in Kazakhstan. The explanation is as follows: The first element of SC orientation is MSP. The results highlighted the statistically significant impact of MSP on CP, similar to Kirchoff et al. (2016) study results that specified MSP as an essential factor in predicting the firm's success in penetrating the complex global market. Thus, this study confirms that MSP is essential in motivating CP among halal SMEs and leads to the acceptance of H1 and the "yes" answer of RQ1. MSP represents a series of actions for managing the upstream and downstream value creations among the SC stakeholders. Nevertheless, this finding differed from Lee et al. (2015), who implied that MSP has a significant but more negligible effect on CP. The discrepancy in the results may be due to errors in the statistical analysis method (PLS-SEM) applied in their research, based on the maximum joint variance (Sarstedt et al., 2016).
The second element of SC orientation is CMM. The result shows that CMM have a significantly positive association with CP in the context of halal SMEs, thus leading to the acceptance of H2 and the "yes" answer of RQ2. This finding matches the research finding of Stanko et al. (2007), who demonstrated that a firm's commitment significantly impacted CP and was vital in ensuring the success of an SC. On the other hand, this finding contradicted the study by Ashby et al. (2012), who noted that the commitment between SC stakeholders was likely to improve market performance instead of the overall CP. In their study, a random sampling methodology was used to collect the data, and hence, there was a possibility that the relevant participants were not adequately targeted (Vasileiou et al., 2018). However, in this study, a purposive sampling methodology specifically targeted the relevant respondents were utilized. Thus, it is evident that the sampling methodology has an essential effect on the results and is closely associated with the study context.
The third element of SC orientation is CRD. The result shows that CRD significantly and positively affects CP of halal SMEs, thus leading to the acceptance of H3 and the "yes" answer of RQ3. The credibility of the SC members in defending the halal status is necessary to maintain customer faith, thereby improving CP Schulze-Ehlers et al. (2014) noted. It must be emphasized that CRD is vital to ensure that halal products are not exposed to the risk of cross-contamination during handling in various parts of the SC and that the raw materials comply with the halal requirements (Poniman et al., 2015). Hence, credibility can be achieved by selecting proper halal-certified SC stakeholders for logistics, warehousing, and retailing . Besides, the selection of credible SC stakeholders demonstrates good governance of the firm and compliance with Sharia, hence positively influencing CP.

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE STUDIES
The research is an initial examination of the link between SC orientation and CP from the perspective of halal SMEs in an emerging nation such as Kazakhstan. It is expected that the findings of the present article can be extended to larger companies. Applying the proposed research model to halal SMEs is lucrative, and it allows us to realize the importance of SC management for CP because, in the global competition of the halal market, most halal SMEs encounter typical challenges like a lack of resources and are members of complex SC.
The research results emphasize the significant impacts of MSP, CMM, and CRD in enhancing CP. Consequently, to enhance halal SMEs' efficiency, companies need to educate their employees about the noteworthiness of SC in ensuring work success and fostering common business objectives across the entire SC network. In addition, this research also serves as essential guidance for the inclusion of SC orientation aspects in the SC management of halal SMEs. Moreover, it is also essential for halal SMEs to concentrate not only on halal compliance, profitability, and productiveness but also on assessing the impact of SC orientation application in halal SC management. The current study furnishes empirical evidence that a company's sustainable performance can be reached by realizing SC orientation in the business operations of halal SMEs.
Based on the research outputs of the current article, the authors offer several research proposals. First, future studies are recommended to consider the proposed model to examine the effect of SC orientation on market performance by applying different CP measurement items. Second, there is an additional call to explore the realization of the SC orientation in other countries to understand better the cultural, ethical, and economic issues that are likely to affect the implementation of SC orientation among halal companies. Third, it would be of great interest to assess the impact of other SC orientation dimensions on CP. Fourth, the rapid growth of demand for halal products in the market facilitates halal SMEs' being strategically placed in the fast-developing international halal business. The emphasis on halal practices in SC management gives scholars the potential to explore the consequences of SC orientation application among halal SMEs.