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This paper aims to empirically analyze how adaptive collaboration in supply chain management impacts demand forecast accuracy in short life-cycle products, depending on collaboration intensity, product life-cycle stage, retailer type and product category.

The authors assembled a data set of forecasts and sales of 169 still-camera models, made by the same manufacturer and sold by three different retailers in France over five years. Collaboration intensity, coded by collaborative planning forecasting and replenishment level, was used to analyze the main effects and specific interaction effects of all variables using ANOVA and ordered feature evaluation analysis (OFEA).

The findings lend empirical support to the long-standing assumption that supply chain collaboration intensity increases demand forecast accuracy and that product maturation also increases forecast accuracy even in short life-cycle products. Furthermore, the findings show that it is particularly the lack of collaboration that causes negative effects on forecast accuracy, while positive interaction effects are only found for life cycle stage and product category.

Investment in adaptive supply chain collaboration is shown to increase demand forecast accuracy. However, the choice of collaboration intensity should account for life cycle stage, retailer type and product category.

This paper provides empirical support for the adaptive collaboration concept, exploring not only the actual benefits but also the way it is achieved in the context of innovative products with short life cycles. The authors used a real-world data set and pushed its statistical analysis to a new level of detail using OFEA.

The study aims to test the success of university-industry (U-I) collaboration in terms of innovation process efficiency. Then, this study explores the moderating role of a set of organizational routines in the U-I relationship, which can help in overcoming the issues undermining the collaboration success.

The study is based on an international Open Innovation (OI) survey. The survey investigated the items to build the main variables of the conceptual framework, measured through seven-point Likert scales. Steps to ensure the reliability and validity of the variables were conducted. Then, hypotheses were tested with an ordinary least squares regression.

Results show that the higher the collaboration intensity (depth) with universities, the higher the innovation process efficiency. Furthermore, organizational routines aimed at improving firms' assimilation absorptive capacity further strengthen the positive effects of intensive collaboration on innovation process efficiency.

Findings indicate that R&D managers should strive to build deep collaborations with universities to enhance process efficiency and invest in the quality of these relationships. Managers should create and maintain an internal environment that further enhances the positive effects of intensive collaboration on innovation process efficiency.

The OI literature has not reached a shared view on the positive contribution of universities toward industrial firms' innovation performance. The study adopts a process-efficiency view, rarely used by other OI studies usually focused on output indicators; this study unpacks, respectively, the role of the intensity of collaboration and the organizational routines, thus disclosing the benefit of U-I collaboration on innovation efficiency.

This paper seeks to identify collaboration elements and evaluate their intensity in the Brazilian supermarket retail chain, especially the manufacturer‐retailer channel.

A structured questionnaire was elaborated and applied to 125 representatives from suppliers of large supermarket chains. Statistical methods including multivariate analysis were employed. Variables were grouped and composed into five indicators (joint actions, information sharing, interpersonal integration, gains and cost sharing, and strategic integration) to assess the degree of collaboration.

The analyses showed that the interviewees considered interpersonal integration to be of greater importance to collaboration intensity than the other integration factors, such as gain or cost sharing or even strategic integration.

The research was conducted solely from the point of view of the industries that supply the large retail networks. The interviews were not conducted in pairs; that is, there was no application of one questionnaire to the retail network and another to the partner industry.

Companies should invest in conducting periodic meetings with their partners to increase collaboration intensity, and should carry out technical visits to learn about their partners' logistic reality and thus make better operational decisions.

The paper reveals which indicators produce greater collaboration intensity, and thus those that are more relevant to more efficient logistics management.

The purpose of this article is to introduce a framework for internet supported inter‐organizational product development, which enables companies to efficiently configure their development processes according to their needs.

Three ideal types of partner integration are identified and specific design guidelines for each type are proposed. Current approaches for product development collaboration are analysed. Based on their shortcomings the main approach of this paper evolves. Additionally the main results of interviews with experts are used to develop and introduce a framework which has been tested partially in the shipbuilding industry.

The paper identifies three types of partner integration and proposes specific design guidelines.

The framework introduced in this paper provides guidance for future research in the area of product development collaboration.

The framework further supports managers in designing efficient and effective inter‐organizational product development collaboration by choosing the appropriate level of partner integration.

The paper presents a practical and usable framework for internet supported inter‐organizational product development collaboration. The main focus is on designing the partnership interaction.

The purpose of this study is to shed further light on determinants of the openness degree to give a more conclusive evidence to the research in the field. In particular, the influence exerted by the technological strategy is still debated, in that evidence on the relationship between the technological strategy and openness is conflicting.

The authors put forward a structural equation model which enriches the state-of-the-art literature by explicitly testing the interplay among technological strategy, openness (innovatively measured in terms of partner intensity, phase intensity and variety in terms of partners, phases and contents) and innovation performance. Our study relies on data from 415 firms based on a research survey developed in Finland, Italy and Sweden.

Findings show that openness, if measured in terms of partner intensity and phase intensity, fully mediates the relationship between technological strategy and innovation performance, by suggesting that the effectiveness of a firm’s technologically aggressive behavior is strongly related to the intensification of collaboration with the partners along the innovation funnel. Conversely, openness variety seems to play an opposite role and is influenced differently by partner and phase intensity. This result likely emphasizes how the cost-side of open behavior becomes harder to manage, and thus costly, when it involves too many different types of partners, phases and contents.

Firms that adopt a technologically aggressive strategy are recommended to deeply open their innovation process to foster innovation performance. However, because of the fact that a high level of openness variety could generate some drawbacks, managers should be very careful in the management of different phases, sources and content. Therefore, what clearly emerges is a call to find adequate strategies for effectively managing the collaboration process to avoid the waste of resources and initiatives.

Originality and the value of the paper reside in a more fine-grained definition of the openness concept, which takes into consideration other facets of openness compared to those usually analyzed in the literature, and a powerful statistical model, such as structural equation modeling, offering great advantages and flexibility in matching the theoretical model with the data.

Following increasing competition on the international tourism market, a great number of Swiss hotels which are generally family businesses with small structures and aging infrastructures, find themselves in a critical financial situation. Thus, many hotels having exhausted their economic potential, cannot adequately upgrade their performance. For this reason they are forced to respond to the requirements of potential investors by presenting the progress of their activities through models of cooperation with other hotel establishments and/or other actors. In view of the significance of this issue, the present article proposes to study the effect of collaboration intensity and the type of management on the performance of Swiss collaborating hotels. By adopting a global approach to performance, it appears that hotel performance is influenced by the intensity of collaboration. Regarding the effect of the type of management the results are more questionable.

This paper aims to advance the understanding regarding the profiting of collaborative innovation practices, focusing particularly on how the intensity of collaboration along the innovation process and the relatedness between the partners’ technological bases affect the outcomes of such process in terms of efficiency and generation of technological innovations.

Drawing on the results from causal models and the estimation of average marginal effects, this research analyses the direct and joint effect of technological proximity and intensity of collaboration in the early and late phases of the process.

The findings suggest that there is a positive unconditional relationship between the aforementioned aspects and innovative performance and that the joint effects diverge depending on the stage of the process, i.e. while in the early phase collaborating intensely with close partners seems to be advisable, this circumstance proves to be problematic in the late phase of the innovation process.

The analysis developed provides clarity regarding relevant aspects of collaborative innovation practices, particularly, the search for and selection of optimal partners. In general terms, the evidence found here suggests seeking for collaborating intensely along the whole process with partners whose technological bases present a tight matchup with that of the focal firm. Results also call for awareness of the potential drawbacks derived from intense collaborations with close partners in the late phases of the process, thus hinting toward the convenience of developing protection mechanisms. In addition, this work provides interesting insights that challenge the notion of “proximity paradox” and set out further questions that might be worth considering for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive model for horizontal logistics collaboration (HLC), including the collaboration types, enablers, context influence and performance indicators.

First, this study discusses the currently available typologies and their limitations and defines relevant collaboration classification dimensions. Then, a detailed analysis of each dimension is conducted, including the identification of resulting collaboration types. Next, collaboration enablers and the context influence are discussed, as well as their implications on the logistics system, with a specific focus on agri-food supply chains (AFSCs). Additionally, adequate key performance indicators (KPIs) are selected to evaluate collaboration outcomes. Finally, the horizontal logistics collaboration concept (HLCC) is applied to an illustrative case study from AFSCs.

The results show that HLC is a complex strategy where several elements intervene in the creation of the collaboration scenario. The research also shows that the specific characteristics of AFSCs influence the partners' selection process and increase the importance of partners' similarity and information exchange.

The results provide managers with practical insights into the dynamic nature of HLC both at the operational and relational levels.

This paper provides a theoretical contribution by introducing a new comprehensive model for HLC and a practical typology that allows a deeper understanding of the mechanisms governing different HLC scenarios.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the concept of supply chain collaboration and to provide an overall framework that can be used as a conceptual landmark for further empirical research. In addition, the concept is explored in the context of agri‐food industry and particularities are identified. Finally, the paper submits empirical evidence from an exploratory case study in the agri‐food industry, at the grower‐processor interface, and information regarding the way the concept is actually applied in small medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) is presented.

The paper employed case study research by conducting in‐depth interviews in the two companies.

Supply chain collaboration concept is of significant importance for the agri‐food industry however, some constraints arise due to the nature of industry's products, and the specific structure of the sector. Subsequently, collaboration in the supply chain is often limited to operational issues and to logistics‐related activities.

Research is limited to a single case study and further qualitative testing of the conceptual model is needed in order to adjust the model before large scale testing.

Case study findings may be transferable to other similar dual relationships at the grower‐processor interface. Weaker parts in asymmetric relationships have opportunities to improve their position, altering the dependence balance, by achieving product/process excellence.

The paper provides evidence regarding the applicability of the supply chain collaboration concept in the agri‐food industry. It takes into consideration not relationships between big multinational companies, but SMEs.

This paper aims to present results from a survey that investigates the situation in real world supply chains concerning logistics collaboration.

Based on supply chain management literature, a questionnaire was developed covering important topics from the literature. The questionnaire was sent to the logistics manager at Swedish manufacturing companies and a net response rate of 37.8 percent (177/482) was achieved. Apart from purely descriptive statistics, factor analysis, cluster analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and cross tabulations with χ ² tests were used for the analysis.

From the results, three major conclusions are drawn. First, there is a clear relationship between the intensity of the collaboration and the positive effects experienced from the collaboration. Second, the results indicate that top management is an important driver for higher intensity collaboration. Third, there are serious differences between supply chain management (SCM) theory and practice, due to the absence of strategic elements in the collaboration and the different ways in which supplier and customer collaborations are managed.

Related to SCM theory, the lack of strategic elements in the collaboration might prevent or decrease the expected positive effects of the collaboration. It is therefore important to increase the strategic level component in the collaboration. Top management involvement is likely to be important to achieve this and hence more research on the topic is suggested.

The study presents a broad overview concerning logistics collaboration that covers many of the most important supply chain management issues. In addition, their relationship is discussed.