A Mult-Theoretic Perspective on Trust and Power in Strategic Supply Chains
What Are the Functions of Strategic Supply Chains as Sources of Competitive Advantage?
The article under consideration is about the four main strategies which can be used in order to improve the strategic supply chain and cooperation between organizations. In this article, the authors touch upon numerous aspects in order to give clear and reasonable grounds of why the offered strategies are chosen.
From the very beginning, it is defined that strategic supply chains are such “chains whose members are strategically, operationally, and technologically integrated, underscored by long-term relations based on stability yet flexibility” (Ireland and Webb 2007, p.482). With the help of such definition, it becomes clear that any supply chain needs a certain strategy and some operations to be maintained on the proper level.
In the tree-diagram presented above, the main ideas and functions that are performed by the strategic supply chains are clearly identified. It is also mentioned why and how improvements need to be implied. Power and trust are considered to be the two main issues of these chains. They are characterized by numerous aspects such as trust in partners and situations and coercive and non-coercive types of power.
And what is more, the relations between power and trust have to be developed by means of four strategies which are described at the top of the tree. These strategies as well as concepts of power and trust are regarded as the central points of the article and the diagram.
The authors underline the importance of the strategies during the whole article and admit that “establishing an authority, forming a common supply chain identity, interlocking organizations trough the use of boundary spanners, and maintaining organizational justice” are the major steps which have to be taken to promote optimal use of power and trust under the certain circumstances each organization may face (Ireland and Webb 2007, p.494).
This diagram represents a clear picture of how the events are developed in the article and what aspects have to be highlighted to get an informative picture of strategic supply chains.
Reference List
Ireland, RD & Webb JW 2007, ‘A Multi-Theoretic Perspective on Trust and Power in Strategic Supply Chains’, Journal of Operations Management vol. 25, pp. 482-497.