Partnerships in Supply Chain Management

Abstract

This chapter considers one of the most important collaborations, namely that of partnership. In recent year's sophisticated and demanding consumer lead severe global competition between companies. So many companies seek to coordinate cross-firm activities and work mutually over time to produce outstanding performance. The main objective of the companies is to reach higher performance than would be achieved by managing individually. For any supply chain in the competitive environment, widening the boundaries of the firm via partnership formation would be the remedy and partnership creates a synergistic business environment for both sides. The objective of the chapter is to present a comprehensive and integrated view of the literature on all aspects of partnership.

Analysing the importance of sustainability‐oriented service quality in competition environment

“…The increasing complexity of distribution management worldwide has forced many companies to outsource their logistics activities to external company known as 3PL providers. In the logistics sector, there are various activities such as inventory management, tracking and tracing, value‐added activities, or even supply chain management to perform, which create intense competition environment among providers (Çotur & Öztürkoğlu, ; Lieb, ). In the literature, there is an argument that service quality has multidimensional attributes and that customers do not perceive all of the quality attributes as equally important (Mikulic & Prebezac, ).…”

“…As an inevitable result of this capacity in the service sector, challenging competition environment appeared with struggles of firms in the point of concentrating on more preferability by customers and seeking new sustainable competitive advantages. In the dynamics of a new market structure, as long as firms' strategic decisions about activities fit the values of society and environment, firms can shape long‐term positioning to be an important player in the market (Çotur & Öztürkoğlu, ). With the discernment that innovation in services and processes is not sufficient to maintain profitability in a competitive environment, firms in the service sector are now focusing on sustainability strategies to realize their achievements (Laari, Töyli, & Ojala, ; Omoregie, Addae, Coffie, Ampong, & Ofori, ).…”