Supply chain cooperative strategies: Trends and gaps

Abstract

Supply chains (SC) are generally complex and are characterized by numerous activities spread over multiple functions and organizations, which bring up numerous challenges for efficient SC cooperation (SCC). To meet these challenges, SC members must work towards a unified system and cooperate with each other. The aim of the work is firstly to provide a comprehensive literature review of the current trends in SCs cooperative strategies modeling and secondly to highlight the fruitful research avenues in this field. As a result, it was found, that in the previous years the research work on supply chain management has primarily focused on the study of materials and information flows and very little work has been done on the study of upstream and downstream flows of money. It is shown, that financial SCs are an integral component of SCs and yet there is very little research that specifically addresses the strategy, implementation and performance of financial SCs. Thus, the further step ahead is development of models of collaborative supply chain networks in the field of financial supply chain management. In order to proceed to such a modeling financial supply chain management key elements are outlined and presented as a theoretical model from the perspective of long-term inter-organizational relationships.