Zugl.: Marburg, Univ., Diss., 2008

Zugl.: Aachen, Techn. Hochsch., Diss., 2009.

Zugl.: Dresden, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2009

The aim of this research is to investigate collaborative supply chain practices between Taiwanese and Chinese companies. To that end, we seek to address four main objectives: 1) to investigate and provide evidence of collaboration in supply chain management; 2) to evaluate supplier development within supply chain collaboration; 3) to investigate the internal processes of supply chain collaboration; and 4) to examine the outcomes of supply chain collaboration. To explore collaboration in supply chain management, we conduct an extensive review of the state of the art in collaborative supply chain, and we base our investigations and discussions on three real-life companies that practice collaborative supply chain methods in the target countries. Each study contains detailed information on each company, including the company’s background, history, culture, marketing strategy and their collaborative practices. We employ pattern-matching structures to analyse current collaborative practices, which allows us to determine the similarities and differences between theoretical collaboration and collaborative supply chain in practice. We have analysed both the literature and collaborative methodologies used by the companies in each case study, and we have identified a number of key findings that address each of the four research objectives. On one hand there is evidence to support the use of collaboration in supply chain management between Taiwanese and Chinese companies. However, to increase collaboration, we propose agreements between the countries and identification of key suppliers. On the other hand, dominant and powerful partners may prevent good collaboration within the supply chains. Therefore, in order to create an open minded and collaborative culture, we propose greater trust between Taiwanese buyers and Chinese and Taiwanese suppliers. The value in collaborative supply chain can then be realised, which has a positive impact on the business in terms of increasing competitive advantage and customer satisfaction. In addition, such collaborative practices provide the motivation for collaborative supply chain management between Taiwanese buyers and Chinese and Taiwanese suppliers.

The subject of illegal supply chains (ISCs) is all but absent from supply chain management research. However, there is much to be gained from investigating this enigmatic and complex topic. This thesis presents propositions that outline the fundamentals for ISCs as an area of study, and reviews relevant theories for ISCs from criminology and supply chain management literature. By exploring these propositions in relation to a case study of the Sinaloa Cartel, the largest drug syndicate in the world, the aim was to verify the accuracy of the propositions so that they could be used in future research. Based on this example, it is proposed that ISCs are similar to their legal counterparts in terms of motivations, structure, and certain key strategies including agility and supply chain integration. Certain strategies are also found to be commonly held, whereas relationships are defined by individualistic rather than truly collaborative behaviours. / October 2015

This thesis studies the influence of horizontal competition on supply chain performance. Unlike most of the existing literature which focuses on horizontal competition between echelon levels, we look at both the supply chain and the individual company??s performance with the presence of supply chain to supply chain competition. Specifically, this thesis is composed of three individual research papers. The first paper deals with chain-to-chain horizontal competition and considers price competition among an arbitrary number of supply chains by comparing two cases. In the first case each supply chain is vertically integrated, while in the second, decentralised, case the manufacturers and retailers act independently. We explore the effect of varying the level of price competition on the profitts of the industry participants and demonstrate the important role played by the spread of underlying market shares. The coefficient of variation of these market shares determines whether decentralised supply chains can outperform integrated supply chains with an appropriate level of competition. The second and third papers focus on in-chain horizontal competition with capacity constraints. In the second paper, we look at a supply chain with one manufacturer and two downstream retailers. Based on total capacity available, the manufacturer needs to find ways to best use the capacity by determining whether or not to release the capacity information to retailers. The third paper looks at competition in a more complicated supply chain structure. A retailer buys three brands of products from two manufacturers. One manufacturer produces both branded and private label products, and the other one manufactures a branded product only. With our model, we are able to determine the profits of each supply chain agent. At the end of the paper, we use data from the Australian milk industry and discuss a problem in which a manufacturer needs to decide how to allocate capacity between the national brand and the private label when there is a capacity shortage.

Doctor of Philosophy / Buyer-supplier relationships have been increasingly considered a critical part of contemporary supply chain management. In response to dynamic and unpredictable market changes, buyers and suppliers enter into cooperative relationships to pursue individual goals and joint goals for better economic and non-economic performance of the supply chain. On the other hand, cooperation between channel members is surrounded by uncertainty, which can create a detrimental impact on the performance of a supply chain. Previous research has focused on various aspects of uncertainty that could affect supply chain member behaviour. The present research contends that relationship behavioural factors play an important role in increasing or mitigating channel members’ perceived uncertainty in their supply or purchase decision-making. Specifically, the purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of retailer-supplier cooperation and retailer/supplier’s decision-making uncertainty (DMU) on retail supply chain performance from the perspectives of both the retailer and the supplier. A holistic model was developed as the theoretical framework for this conceptualisation. A sample of 202 retailers and 64 suppliers in the sporting goods retail business in Taiwan was used to separately test a number of hypothesised relationships by using structural equation modelling (SEM). The findings indicate that both cooperation and DMU are the key determinants of retail supply chain performance, including financial performance and non-financial performance (i.e., supply flexibility and customer service). Financial performance is positively affected by retailer-supplier cooperation and negatively affected by DMU in both the retailer model and the supplier model. The five dimensions of retailer-supplier cooperation (i.e. trust, guanxi, dependence, coercive power and non-coercive power) have significant effects on cooperation. However, apart from guanxi with the retailer/supplier, neither other relationship dimensions nor retailer-supplier cooperation have any influence on retailer’s DMU or supplier’s DMU. The results also indicate that differences and similarities exist across retailers and suppliers with respect to the effects of several relationship dimensions on cooperation and uncertainty. 2 The holistic empirical model developed for this research contributes further to understanding the links, which have been lacking in the extant channel relationship literature and supply chain management literature, between buyer-supplier relationships, DMU, and supply chain performance. The findings that a retailer/supplier’s DMU can erode the performance of a supply chain in various aspects highlight the need for improvement in some areas of supply chain efficiency and effectiveness, through cooperation-enhancing actions between the retailer and the supplier. From a managerial perspective, the performance improvement in the supply chain, in turn, will motivate more reciprocal commitment and efforts from the retailer and the supplier to maintain their working relationship. As such, mutual trust and enriched guanxi, dependence and non-coercive power help both the retailer and the supplier to have less uncertainty in their purchase/supply decision-making process. It creates a win-win position for both parties in the supply chain.

Zugl.: München, Univ., Diss., 2005

Zugl.: Darmstadt, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2005

Zugl.: Cranfield, Univ., Diss., 2006