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Considers the development of local supply chains in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The reconstruction of supply chains, torn apart by the collapse of central planning, is a very important task for national economic recovery in all the transition economies but, as Western experience shows, it could be especially germane to economic development at the local and regional level. Using the results of research carried out in Kazakhstan during late 1995 and 1996, we outline the local supply chains which are beginning to emerge and attitudes towards them. The case is made for increased local policy intervention to promote local supply chain development in Kazakhstan and, by implication, elsewhere in the transition economies.

This study aims to explore three critical factors, namely, specific assets investment (SAI), knowledge integration mechanism (KIM) and complementary capability (CC), the antecedents of market knowledge from on structure, process and strategy aspects. This study then tests their effects on the market knowledge-market performance linkage in an asymmetric commerce relationship.

This study identified the asymmetric business-to-business (B2B) channel relationship of travel service industry. A total of 248 responses were received from the two waves of data collection and the data was analyzed by the structural equation modeling method.

Based on the managerial theory related to transaction cost, knowledge-based view and resource-dependent, SAI, KIM and CC all affect market knowledge, and had an indirect effect on market performance; market knowledge significantly and positively affects market performance.

In addition to relationship marketing or social exchange theory, this study provides an integrated framework with different theoretical studies to supplement the explanation of relationship marketing theory in the non-significant relationship between trust and commitment and their outcomes.

This study provides answers for weaker firms how to enhance their market knowledge from their stronger partners.

No current studies have explored how service firms with weak bargaining power could enhance their market knowledge under an imbalanced B2B relationship. This supports the call for the possible factors as the key antecedents of market knowledge on the asymmetric B2B relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of network strength, transaction‐specific investments and inter‐personal trust on business relationship satisfaction for small‐and‐medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) involved in agri‐food processing and exporting in China.

Survey data collected from 80 agri‐food SMEs in Jiangsu Province were used for empirical testing. The authors applied an ordered logit regression approach for model estimation.

The results demonstrate that strong guanxi networks, high level of transaction‐specific investments and inter‐personal trust significantly contribute to a high level of relationship satisfaction for agri‐food SMEs in China. In addition, inter‐personal trust shows a moderating effect on the relationship between transaction‐specific investments and relationship satisfaction.

Business relationships play a critical role in the modern market environment. Relational arrangements (based on guanxi and inter‐personal trust) should be further enhanced in order to yield satisfied business relationships for SMEs in China.

The paper extends our understanding of relationship (guanxi) marketing, as well as marketing practices for agri‐food SMEs in China.

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors which influence the sustainability of selected German agri‐food chains.

The paper is composed of a literature review, qualitative and quantitative expert interviews, and structural equation modelling.

Effective communication, the existence of personal bonds and equal power distribution between buyers and suppliers are key determinants of sustainable vertical business relationships. The relevance and significance of the determinants differ across the investigated chain stages (farmer‐processor versus processor‐retailer), the use of formal versus non‐formal relationship types and the maturity of a relationship.

Further research needs to empirically apply the analysis to agri‐food chains other than the investigated pig‐meat and cereal ones.

Agribusiness and farm managers can enhance the sustainability of their business relationships by effective communication by fostering personal bonds with their suppliers and/or buyers, and by employing – and retaining – key staff who fit culturally and/or socially with those with whom they transact. Finally, managers also need to be aware of the fact that a business relationship can be negatively affected by abusing a more powerful market position.

A model for measuring the sustainability of vertical business relationships is presented and empirically tested. In addition, factors influencing the sustainability of these relationships are identified for the case of selected German agri‐food chains.

As the manufacturing market is becoming more global and borderless with respect to national borders, a number of global manufacturing networks have been established, taking the advantage of fast‐growing networking and information technologies. Networked enterprises consist of a number of firms that are geographically dispersed and do not belong to the same head company, a system with central management capability, possessing the ability of central task decomposition/allocation, co‐ordination and monitoring. To ensure appropriate manufacturing operations are assigned to the appropriate firms, to the best interest of the “virtual” consortium, there is a need for the development of a collaborative platform which is capable of facilitating the efficient performance of resources and task allocations. In this paper, the development of a Web‐based enterprise collaborative platform is presented. The applications of the platform on business process management for networked enterprises are also discussed.

The evolution of organization, management and production processes is moving towards complexity. The ever growing competition presses firms to give intangible internal and external exclusive resources the utmost attention. The improvement of the performance, through the retrieval of resources, neither available internally nor achievable autonomously, can be reached by going beyond traditional firm boundaries and by enforcing an external relationship system: proliferation of networks, partnerships, and inter‐organizational collaborations should be, consequently, triggered. The purpose of this paper concerns the evaluation of knowledge impact on relationships among the members of an inter‐organizational collaboration. It also aims to suggest conditions for the improvement of knowledge management in different types of knowledge‐based inter‐organizational collaborations.

Critical success factors of the networked organizations have been defined. Distinctive characteristics, that cannot be disregarded, whatever the environment, have been singled out from literature analysis; successively, they have been arranged into a classification schema to design knowledge‐based collaboration types. Properties of knowledge and peculiarities of knowledge management processes (identification, creation, storage, sharing/distribution, application, and capitalization/refinement) have been assessed according to the types of the collaborations.

The theoretical framework can be applied by network managers to adopt the most favourable knowledge management strategy and process, independent of the distinctive characteristics of the collaborations.

The paper provides a theoretical framework to arrange the knowledge‐based inter‐organizational collaborations into an innovative classification schema on the basis of their cognitive, strategic and structural aspects.

In this paper, a server‐based enterprise collaborative management system using enterprise application integration technology is developed for trial implementation at Honeywell Consumer Products (Hong Kong) Limited, in the area of supplier relationship management. The system facilitates supplier selection using an integrative case‐based supplier selection and help desk approach to select the most appropriate suppliers, based on their past performance records from a case‐based warehouse. Discusses a case study to integrate Honeywell's supplier rating system and product coding system by case‐based reasoning technique to select preferred suppliers during the new product development process. Finds that the outsource cycle time from the searching of potential suppliers to the allocation of orders is greatly reduced while performance of suppliers can be monitored simultaneously.

This study investigates the impact of network positions on inter-team conflicts and project success in megaprojects.

Network position is measured with centrality and structural holes. Substantive conflict and affective conflict reflect inter-team conflicts. A questionnaire survey was implemented in Chinese megaprojects, and 309 valid questionnaires were collected. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping methods.

The results show that centrality negatively impacts project success, while the presence of a team in a structural hole has no significant impact on project success. Centrality is negatively related to substantive conflict and is positively related to affective conflict. The team in a structural hole has a positive effect on substantive conflict and a negative effect on affective conflict. Substantive conflict and affective conflict have positive and negative effects on project success, respectively. The effect of network position on project success is mediated by inter-team conflict.

This research provides a reference for megaproject managers to better conduct network governance, manage inter-team conflict, and successfully manage projects. The study did not investigate the effects of changes in teams' network positions on project success. Future research should explore this facet of megaprojects.

This research adds to existing research on network position, and reveals that project network governance is important for megaproject success. This provides a new direction for megaproject management. Furthermore, the results validate constructive and non-constructive roles and the mediating role of inter-team conflict. This complements the literature on conflict management, providing a reference for megaproject managers when managing inter-team conflict.

This paper sets out to review the different types of outsourcing, its drivers and process, and to identify world‐class capabilities that host organisations can leverage.

This paper is primarily based on a review of literature.

Outsourcing helps the organisation to achieve higher levels of value creation for the final customer. Drivers of outsourcing emanate from organisational initiatives, improvement focus, financial and cost objectives, or growth objectives. A wide range of core and non‐core critical business processes are increasingly being outsourced covering a large spectrum of sectors and operations, enabling host organisations to gain access to world‐class capabilities.

This paper identifies critical drivers of outsourcing and the process by reviewing available literature in this area. In doing this an attempt is made to find answers to some fundamental questions. What are the main types and drivers of outsourcing? What are the different phases in the process of outsourcing? This paper discusses in detail the significant drivers and process of outsourcing; and the world‐class capabilities accessible by the host organisation. Case studies are used to illustrate these aspects further.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the role and main attributes of manufacturing companies which operate in virtual supply chains.

In order to identify the role and main attributes of manufacturing companies enabling to operate in a virtual supply chain, a three-step statistical analysis was employed, namely exploratory factor analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis and non-hierarchical clustering technique.

The findings show that virtual supply chain operations would not be supported by manufacturing companies offering highly customized products achieved by a unit production, developed in details and engineered to order. On the contrary, the large manufacturing companies of virtual supply chains report a high level of flexibility stemming from a wide scope of more standardized products offered to the market. The conducted study show that better ability of manufacturers supporting virtual supply chains is not industry specific.

The list of investigated attributes is not complete, and other characteristics of manufacturers in virtual supply chains should be identified. Another important shortcoming of the study is its quantitative character and generalization of the findings. Each “virtual” environment in supply chains may be unique and some of the compared characteristics may differ significantly. Therefore, the aforementioned attributes should be considered separately with a conscious focus on the environmental context. The quantitative study may be greatly enhanced by applying the case study approach, showing detailed solutions and practices, and thus making the study more valuable from the theoretical and managerial standpoints.

The conducted study showed that better ability of manufacturers to support virtual supply chains is not industry specific, since the branch of electronic products and electrical equipment and components was represented by an equal share of manufacturers, both in non-virtual and virtual clusters. Furthermore, in order to operate in virtual supply chains, managers should pay attention to the structure and range of products delivered to the market. The managers should also be aware that apart from considering cost and efficiency, operating in a virtual supply chain environment also requires quality of products and processes in order to manufacture and deliver a superior value for the customers.

Having recognized major groups of indicators demonstrating the level of ability of manufacturing companies to operate in a virtual supply chain, the attributes of three clusters of manufacturers possessing different bunch of features, significant for virtual supply chains, have been distinguished.