Authors: Niels Grünbaum; Svend Hollensen
The purpose of the paper is to create a framework for selecting and evaluating the success-factors and the coordinating activities in the ‘supplier ? focal firm ? customer? relationship. The paper aims to create idiographic, holistic and context dependent knowledge. This is achieved by producing thick descriptions of one medium-sized Danish OEM company, originally founded in the iron- and metal industry and now moved to a related industry. The results from the case show that:- Preconditioned changes at one analytical level lead to changes at several other levels.- the type of relationship is maybe more driven by these preconditioned changes than believed previously – the case company used a somehow balanced portfolio of relationship/transactional strategies depending on context dependent conditions.On the basis of the results an integrated model of how to manage the relational processes between the supplier side, the focal company and the customer side was proposed. The paper shows that in order to secure efficient and profitable coordination of suppliers and customers, the focal company needs to understand and interpret the layers of preconditions that surrounds it. It also appeared that due to the extent of interactive and continuously changing factors short and unambiguous strategic recommendations are not desirable in the process of achieving the wanted coordination and control. Instead we have made a point of preparing an extensive systematic analysis, in which the importance of the individual factors depends on the reality that the organization is embedded in. Furthermore it becomes important to have and continuously updated understanding of the layers of preconditions. We therefore recommend having a decision support system with the purpose of providing management with relevant and focused supplier and customer information in order to improve coordination of activities between suppliers and customers. Among other purposes, this information should be used for evaluating supplier capabilities, because in the future we will see a need for developing coordination competences in the focal company. The ability to transform customer wants and demands into cooperation opportunities in relation to suppliers will be crucial in future.
Journal: ( – )
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Publish Year: 2003
Conference: Lugano, Switzerland (2003)