The impact of an organization's collaborative capacity on its ability to engage its supply chain partners

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to constructively evaluate the process adopted by a leading Australian food processor to engage its major supply chain partners more collaboratively as part of the company's strategy to strengthen its competitive position. Design/methodology/approach -This paper adopts a qualitative methodology and is based on a series of semi-structured interviews conducted over a two-year period with multiple informants within the focal company and its supply chain partners. Findings -This research illustrates the importance of the focal firm having developed its own collaborative capabilities before engaging their supply chain partners. The findings clearly demonstrate that building closer relationships even with important supply chain partners is difficult and resource intensive and that the nature of the ensuring relationship will vary.Research limitations/implications -The major limitation of this research is that it is centred on a single case study, which restricts the extent to which generalizations can be drawn from its outcomes. This limitation is off-set by the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that influence the development of supply chain relationships. Practical implications -Many of the published works in this area are theoretical or prescriptive in nature, this paper provides an empirical example of the issues involved in the development of inter-organizational relationships and their management Originality/value -This paper reports on a longitudinal study over a two-year period, which involved multiple interviews with respondents who were participants in the engagement process.

Organic Supply Chain Collaboration: A Case Study in Eight EU Countries

“…Reasons might be that they see it as impacting on their independence in running their business and that a significant proportion of actors do not see a lack of chain integration as adversely impacting on their business [45] . Furthermore, building closer relationships even with important supply chain partners is difficult and resource intensive [46] . Closer relationships however were found for the collaboration dimension of Information Sharing with respect to delivery, prices, demand forecast as well as with respect to food quality and safety.…”

Exploring internal and external supply chain linkages: Evidence from the field

“…According to Yin (1989, p. 40), the single case can "offer a significant contribution to knowledge and theory building." While a single case offers only limited generalizability (Bartlett et al, 2007;Ngai et al, 2007;Dunne, 2008), it does allow an in-depth exploration of information-based linkages in their natural setting, i.e., a supply chain. It also provides the opportunity to develop a deep understanding of the nature and complexity of the phenomena and is appropriate when few (if any) previous indepth studies on information-based linkages have been carried out (Benbasat et al, 1987).…”

Supply Chain Integration Strategy: A Conceptual Model of Supply Chain Relational Capital Enabler in the Malaysian Food Processing Industry

“…Although integrative relationship is considered as a vital source of competitive advantage that may provide numerous benefits to firm either in a form of economic or non-economic value, close relationship of focal firm with its supply chain partners is difficult to achieve and execute (Dunne, 2008). In fact, there were a substantial number of authors who disagree with the notion that supply chain integration (SCI) will always have positive impact on firms performance either from the aspect of tangible or non-tangible performance (Bask & Juga, 2001;Power, 2005) and the potential benefits that associated with SCI were ambiguous (Pagell, 2004).…”