Best practices in demand forecasting: Tests of universalistic, contingency and configurational theories

The paper focuses on best practices in demand forecasting. Literature has addressed the best practice concept under three different perspectives. According to the universalistic perspective, some forecasting practices are universally effective regardless of the context in which companies operate. In the contingent perspective, the effectiveness of forecasting practices depends on the specific kind of context each company faces. A third perspective is the configurational one, which asserts that there are synergistic effects among best practices. In this work, we compare these different perspectives by designing and testing different sets of propositions that underline the aforementioned perspectives. Analysis is conducted by collecting data of more than 500 companies in different countries via the 4th edition of the Global Manufacturing Research Group (GMRG IV) questionnaire. The results demonstrate that each perspective has some empirical support. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.