Authors: Coll Fiachra; Coughlan Joseph; Ji Chao
Given the economic turbulence that organisations are facing, it is clear that business environment factors are having an impact on how firms conduct their affairs and how they interact with their supply chain partners. This paper considers the effect of internal and external business environment factors on supply chain satisfaction and performance as mediated by relationship aspects. There is a distinct lack of research on how environmental factors affect performance in a relationship context.The orientation of a business towards its partners can be likened to a state of flux (Lynch et al, 2012). There is growing recognition throughout the world of purchasing and supply that there is no single optimal buyer-supplier relationship and a “horses for courses” approach to employ the most “fit for purpose” relationship is required (Cox and Thompson, 1997). Supply chain buyer supplier relationships have attracted a lot of attention in the literature (Bensaou, 1999: Cox, 2004b: Håkansson and Snehota, 1995: Trent, 2005) and continue to do so.These relationships can help firms to achieve cost reduction or profit improvement, but also seek to make the supply chain as a whole more competitive (Cox and Thompson, 1997).The current research aims to address this gap within the context of buyer-supplier relationships using a dyadic approach concentrating on individual supply chains of companies using Chinese organisations for their supply chain partners. This paper reports on qualitative research with these respondents.The results of the research validate the importance of the business environment factors developed in the paper as having significant effects on supply chain satisfaction and performance.The IMP approach which considers relationships
Journal: n.a. (n.a. – n.a.)
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Publish Year: 2012
Conference: Rome, Italy (2012)