On the relationship between cash flow bullwhip and the company performance: study of the Moroccan detergent products branch

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant bullwhip effect, which resulted in a cash flow bullwhip (CFB) in the Moroccan FMCG industry. As illustrated by a previous study, some companies were more affected by CFB than others. This indicates that CFB could be correlated to some specific aspects or characteristics of these companies. The objective of this article is to thoroughly examine the connections between CFB control and the company's internal control performance, financial performance, and supply chain performance. Therefore, a field study is conducted on the producers of detergent products. The results confirm that some performance criteria are directly correlated to the degree of exposure to CFB. In fact, a firm is able to regulate CFB when it has an effective internal control system, a reliable supply chain, and strong financial efficiency. However, the relative importance of these performance criteria is not evident. This opens the opportunity to develop a multi-criteria model that could hierarchize the different performance criteria.