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The aim of this paper is to interpret the concept of a business model from the pattern of coordination mechanisms used by an Italian wine cooperative to manage its inter-organizational relationships.

The business model is taken as the structure and governance of the relationships between the focal firm and its exchange partners. The empirical analysis is based on a qualitative investigation, analyzing material collected at the Farming Cooperative Gran Cru.

Several different coordination mechanisms were used to rethink the firm customer value proposition, showing a very complex and dynamic inter-organizational system: process control mechanisms, knowledge suppliers and clan control mechanisms. The combination of mechanisms enables the firm to govern the extreme complexity of external complementarities and interdependence among activities and resources.

The study is particularly helpful to managers because wine entrepreneurs and managers can influence their networks’ features and strategies, as well as the mechanisms for governance of the relationships and extracting customer value.

The study seeks to enrich the debate on the strategy/structure fit by shifting the focus from the organizational to inter-organizational level of analysis. The analysis centers on boundary-spanning relationships between one wine firm and its partners and knowledge suppliers. This perspective brings business model analysis and inter-organizational design closer because variables of the business model – such as customer value – can be seen as combinations of inter-organizational coordination mechanisms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of rice supply chain in the context of the role of rice farmer organizations and cooperative networks in Thailand.

Primary data were solicited from the cooperatives and members of cooperatives for this study through questionnaire administration. The questionnaire containing a five-point Likert scale was posed to respondents to ascertain their problems before and after joining the network (for cooperative) and after joining the cooperative (for members). This study employed the independent two-sample student t-test (two-tailed) to test for significant difference in the means of scores regarding the problems of cooperatives before and after the cooperative network, and also to test for significant difference in the means of scores of the problems of members of the cooperatives before and after joining the cooperative.

The study revealed that key production and marketing problems such as increased transaction costs and market uncertainties confronting the cooperative organizations have been diminished as a result of the networks. Key problems of the members of the cooperatives such as exploitation and opportunistic behavior of traders to whom they sell their products have been reduced as a result of joining the cooperatives.

This paper is not without caveat. The governance structures in relation to leadership, financial arrangements and bargaining power balance have not been analyzed in this study and these are avenues for further research.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first that examined the combined roles of farmer organizations and cooperative networks in developing the rice supply chain in Thailand.

Regarding the global development of the wine industry, China has gained a notable share in terms of wine consumption, and its domestic wine production has increased steadily since 2000. The wine production process requires close coordination between growers and processors to avoid disruption and instability in the supply chain of the wine grapes. However, vertical coordination in the Chinese wine regions has received little attention. Based on the existing theoretical background on vertical coordination, this study aims to detect the evolution processes of vertical coordination in the Chinese grape market.

Exploratory qualitative research fits with the aim of this study. From December 2018 to January 2019, interviews with grape growers and wine processors of various Chinese wine-producing areas took place. After transcribing all recorded files into text, a qualitative data analysis following the approach of Mayring (2015) was used to analyse and interpret the data.

The models of vertical coordination in the grape supply in China vary between the producer's requirements on grape quality/quantity and the arrangements of grape supply chains, which are diverse depending on regional strategies of the local government.

However, in this research, the authors did not get into details on the organization of the contractual coordination, and due to the limited access to grape growers, the relationship between farmers and processors cannot be analysed in detail. With a better understanding of the coordination relationship and enhanced contract enforcement, the vineyard management and grape supply chain management can be better performed, inducing a steady industrial development.

Regarding the global development of the wine industry, China has gained a notable share in terms of wine consumption, and its domestic wine production has increased steadily since 2000. However, vertical coordination in the Chinese wine regions has received little attention. The study provides a first insight into the grape market structures, as very little is known.

The rapid development of e-commerce has caused not only explosive growth of the express delivery industry, but also ever-greater operational pressures. Models from the sharing economy may provide new ideas for operational improvement. The purpose of this paper is to consider an optimization method that reduces costs and increases efficiency. The proposed method enables a shared distribution system based on revenue-sharing and cooperative investment contracts.

The authors design a two-echelon supply chain (SC) of the shared distribution system with one shared distribution company and N express companies. In this SC, the express companies provide only inter-city transportation, and they outsource internal-city transportation to a shared distribution company. This distribution system differs from that of the traditional express delivery industry. The traditional system of delivery requires large numbers of empty trips (with no load to deliver), because the operating mode of urban distribution has been the franchise. To offer greater efficiency and performance, the authors introduce the sharing economy mode of express delivery. The authors examine the potential of a joint optimal decision-making strategy that involves revenue-sharing and cooperative investment contracts based on an order flow proportion (OFP) and a revenue-sharing factor (RSF). In this shared distribution system, the most important innovation is that all of the express companies jointly invest in and establish a shared distribution company based on OFP or RSF principles.

The profitability of an SC with revenue-sharing contracts based on an OFP system is much higher than that of a decentralized SC, and it is very close to the profitability of a centralized SC. In SCs with revenue-sharing contracts that are based on RSFs, there are many possible combinations of RSFs that can increase the overall profitability. The analyses indicate that the OFP system offers the best solution in designing revenue-sharing contracts based on RSFs.

This study indicates that revenue-sharing contracts based on both OFP and RSF principles can increase overall SC returns by 0.21 to 0.44 percent. In sum total, this improvement could mean a 0.84 to 1.76bn Yuan increase in revenues for the 400+ bn-Yuan express delivery industry.

The authors find that a combination of equity investment and SC coordination contracts makes the cooperation between SC members much more stable. Through this kind of shared distribution system, the scale of economy can further reduce the costs and increase the efficiency of the express delivery industry.

Over the past three decades, there has been considerable change in the education of children with disabilities in Canada. Children with developmental disabilities attend inclusive classrooms and are educated alongside their non-disabled peers, receiving services and supports to optimize their participation (Hutchinson, 2014; Slee, R. (2001). Social justice and the changing directions in educational research: The case of inclusive education. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 5(2), 167–177). In Canada, occupational therapists have provided services in schools for over three decades with the aim of supporting participation of children with disabilities (Graham, D. R., Kennedy, D., Phibbs, C., & Stewart, D. (1990). Position paper on occupational therapy in schools. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 57(4), 1–6; Reid, Chiu, Sinclair, Wehrmann, & Naseerl, 2006). This chapter presents examples from case study research conducted in Ontario, Canada, on the delivery of school-based occupational therapy (SBOT) for two young children (focal participants) with developmental disabilities. Case study research was used to describe the nature of SBOT service delivery from multiple stakeholder perspectives. Data were gathered over the duration of one school year using a combination of observation, document analysis, and interviews involving participants directly involved in the delivery of SBOT with each focal participant. Common characteristics in these two cases enabled cross-case analysis to identify features of collaborative working that facilitated educational programming and outcomes for students with developmental disability.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an assessment of benefits to farmers from vertical coordination in dairy. To analyze this, the authors first document the functioning of the cooperative (and changes thereof with increased competition). The paper also uses a field survey to quantify the benefits. In the process, the authors investigate the issue of selection/participation of farmers.

This paper is largely based on a survey of households in two districts of Indian Punjab along with secondary data. Descriptive as well as regression analyses have been conducted to address the research questions.

The paper presents several key findings. First, the public sector enterprise has been dynamic as competition from private sector has brought favorable changes. There is also evidence of negative selection of farmers implying that those who join dairy cooperatives would have significantly inferior outcomes outside vis‐à‐vis the ones who actually are independent. No bias against farmers by their herd size and significant gains upon participation can explain the scaling up from the demand side. In other words many farmers would find it profitable to become members of the cooperative.

Although the survey was extensive in measurement of costs by including variable and fixed costs of production, marketing as well as transaction costs, the data on fixed costs turned out to be noisy. Further, the analysis based on cross‐sectional data could not account for unobserved farmer level individual heterogeneity. Also, the outside option for the farmer in this paper is to be independent. It is possible that this could be integration with private sector, a case that the study does not cover.

Benefits from coordination should motivate policies for promoting it. The finding that increased competition has fostered dynamism in the public sector has implications far beyond the case studied here.

Despite the extensive system of cooperatives, there do not exist rigorous studies that assess the gains to farmers from this type of horizontal and vertical coordination. The extent of gains establishes a measure of foregone earnings since the supply chains in India remain uncoordinated.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different types of triad structures, and the management mechanisms adopted by the focal company, affect cooperative performance.

This paper uses a social network perspective to examine the triad management phenomenon in the military avionics maintenance context, which is closely associated with the field of operations management.

This paper demonstrates that different triad structures and management mechanisms influence perceived cooperative performance. Four main findings emerged: in a triad, a firm playing a bridging role perceives higher cooperative performance than when playing a peripheral role in the triad or being located in a fully connected triad. When a firm plays the bridging role in a triad, and has a high level of trust, this leads to higher perceived cooperative performance. When a firm plays a peripheral role in a triad, high levels of coordination mechanism combined with high levels of trust result in higher levels of perceived cooperative performance. In a fully linked triad, when the coordination mechanism is well developed, the level of trust is high, so that the resulting level of perceived cooperation is high.

This paper extends the knowledge of triad management by providing an in‐depth study of a well‐defined network setting with exceptionally high‐level access to the most senior executives. In practice, this paper shows how to manage different triads.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how various transaction-cost characteristics influence the choice of vertical coordination (VC) structures (e.g. different contract types) and horizontal coordination (HC) structures (e.g. different farmer organization types) to link smallholder farmers efficiently with buyers. It analyzes the relationship between vertical and horizontal structures, and the economic sustainability of different structure combinations.

The paper develops a conceptual framework to predict coordination structures as a function of transaction-cost characteristics, compares predictions for the Malian cereals market to empirical evidence using 15 case studies, and then analyzes structure combinations.

Asymmetric scale between farmers and buyers; uncertainty in production, prices, policy, and contract enforcement; and quality and quantity debasement lead to selections of structures with high levels of control. Vertical and horizontal structures demonstrate a complementary relationship in certain core coordination roles, while exhibiting substitutability in the provision of other coordination activities. The marketing cooperative and marketing contract pairing is the most prevalent combination.

The conceptual framework is useful for explaining the selection of coordination structures, and can be applied in other contexts to strengthen external validity.

The framework facilitates predictions and explanation of both VC and HC structures, with empirical application on a country and value chains receiving little attention in the literature.

With rising environmental concerns, recent years have witnessed a significant surge of academic and corporate interest in green supply chain coordination (GSCC). This is evident from the rise in channel coordination literature focused toward the elimination of sub-optimal in the green supply chain (GSC). This paper seeks to summarize the model-based research on coordination in GSCs with the help of a framework developed specifically for this paper. The purpose of this paper is to present an in-depth analysis of the widely used models in the area.

A review of literature is presented in this paper to examine the underlying concepts peculiar to GSCC. A classification framework is developed to present an exhaustive survey of commonly used concepts.

Around 90 percent of the papers on GSCC come from game theory (GT) application, which explicitly utilizes coordination through contracts. The review concludes prospective area of research in GSCC. The study posits that there exists a potential of creating a more rational and efficient coordination strategies to improve GSC’s operational performance, with the view of the optimum distribution of resources and better environmental management.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first state-of-the-art review of GSCC literature focused primarily on mathematical model-based literature. This review identifies various methodological and content-oriented characteristics of GSCC. The paper also opens avenues of future research.

Most firms in the fashion industry frequently design and promote new products, which leads to a two-period phenomenon in product sales. This study aims to examine the optimal advertising efforts of each channel member and the subsidy strategies of the manufacturer with retail competition in a two-period supply chain.

By utilizing the game theory, this study developed a cooperative advertising model that considers the element of retailer competition in a two-period supply chain.

The main results of this study are as follows. An increase in the subsidy rate of one retailer’s advertising cost will lead to a decrease in the share of the other. When a manufacturer’s marginal profit from one retailer is considerably larger than that from the other, the manufacturer will share more advertising cost with the former. This study demonstrates that a bilateral participation contract can achieve supply chain coordination and increases the likelihood of retailers to participate in this contract when competition effect is small.

First, product price is not a decision variable in this model. This concern can be studied in future work. Second, the one-manufacturer and two-retailer supply chain can be expanded to competitive manufacturers.

This study provides some decision references for the manufacturer and retailer on advertising strategies. The manufacturer can also gain insights into cooperative advertising strategy when facing a competitive retail environment.

Most previous studies related to cooperative advertising focused on a single-period supply chain. This study investigates cooperative advertising strategy with retail competition in two-period sales and explores the potential coordinating power of a bilateral participation contract.