To survive and thrive in the competition, firms have strived to achieve greater supply chain collaboration to leverage the resources and knowledge of suppliers and customers. Internet based technologies, particularly interorganizational systems, further extend the firms’ opportunities to strengthen their supply chain partnerships and share real-time information to optimize their operations. Supply Chain Collaboration: Roles of Interorganizational Systems, Trust, and Collaborative Culture explores the nature and characteristics, antecedents, and consequences of supply chain collaboration from multiple theoretical perspectives. Supply Chain Collaboration: Roles of Interorganizational Systems, Trust, and Collaborative Culture conceptualizes supply chain collaboration as seven interconnecting elements including information sharing, incentive alignment, goal congruence, decision synchronization, resource sharing, as well as communication and joint knowledge creation. These seven components define the occurrence of collaborative efforts and allow us to explain supply chain collaboration more precisely. Collaborative advantages are also divided into five components to capture the joint competitive advantages and benefits among supply chain partners. The definitions and measures developed here examine some central issue surrounding supply chain development but this is also followed up with real-life managerial practicalities. This balance of theory and practical application makes Supply Chain Collaboration: Roles of Interorganizational Systems, Trust, and Collaborative Culture a strong resource for industry practitioners and researchers alike.

For students who want to advance their understanding of company logistics and supply chains, the author examines how a number of firms in a supply chain work together to create a flow of products and services that satisfies end customers, whilst enabling all the manufacturing and service companies involved to grow profitably. Including the most recent concepts and theoretical advances to emerge from the field of logistics and supply chain management, this text informs and assists its readers with the aid of case studies and accompanying questions, diagrams, photos and an accompanying website.

This work presents a comprehensive model of supply chain management. Experienced executives from 20 companies clearly define supply chain management, identifying those factors that contribute to its effective implementation. They provide practical guidelines on how companies can manage supply chains, addressing the role of all the traditional business functions in supply chain management and suggest how the adoption of a supply chain management approach can affect business strategy and corporate performance.

WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR? (see www.unchainyourcorporation.com for a lot more information and testimonials about this book) We are entering an era of super specialization and exceedingly targeted communication. Like other high level professionals, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to articulate my target audience very carefully and accurately. Now there are potentially 4 scenarios. If you are the target audience, then everything ticks perfect. If you are not the target audience, but you know somebody who can possibly use the book and its core message, in which case I would encourage you to recommend the book to him/her. Alternately, you might be in a position where you are not yet in the target audience, but you are aspiring to be, in which case this book might prove valuable to you. If you are in none of those 4 positions, then regrettably this book is not going to be to your liking. So who is the target audience of this book? At Global Supply Chain Group, since our foundation in January 2000, we have worked with CEOs, boards, executives and senior decision makers in large to mid-size companies around the world, helping them achieve positive and measurable business transformations. Needless to say, our experience has entirely been with these individuals and they are the target audience for our books and intellectual property. More specifically, our ideal clients and partners as well as the ideal readers for this book would be the influential and resourceful executives, and the CEOs who expect a big positive change, a big delta in results, in profits, and revenues as a result of business transformations. Thus, these are the companies and executives who do not wish to keep asking what the next step is. They acknowledge the internal challenges and changes in the external marketplace as their first step. They understand the need for change. They are prepared to take the action. Most of them are large businesses with huge manufacturing, distribution, logistics, inventory and other physical infrastructure in their footprints. They know that a business transformation every few years is required in order to keep the business relevant with the trends in the market place, with the trends in technology, consumer taste as well as the changes in the political legal environment. They want to maximize their profitability while minimizing their risk by using a tried and tested methodology for business transformations, and they create long term partnerships with best-of-breed thought leaders and leverage those partnerships for positive business transformations over a period of time.

Recent news events related to quality in global supply chains have called attention to the need for more research on supply chains that operate in a global context. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a supply chain that does not cut across national boundaries at some point. The presence of global supply chains introduces a number of new management challenges. Managing Global Supply Chain Relationships: Operations, Strategies and Practices focuses on issues related to relationships among members of global supply chains. This comprehensive work addresses three important aspects of global supply chain relationships: supply chain integration and collaboration; outsourcing and offshoring of production; and recent growth in supplier networks.