Sustainability and Effectiveness in Global Supply Chains: Toward an Approach Based on a Long-term Learning Process
The industry has undergone significant changes in recent decades. Today, it is no longer home-based and operates in a global market. The integration of demand and supply has widened the strategic relevance of logistic networks, processes and systems. This
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Abstract The industry has undergone significant changes in recent decades. Today, it is no longer home-based and operates in a global market. The integration of demand and supply has widened the strategic relevance of logistic networks, processes and systems. This integration along global supply chains depends on trustful partnership, international and hence cross-cultural cooperation. The design, plan and management of logistics are particularly complex because of the diversity of contexts, organisations and individuals involved. Therefore, suitable long-term learning process should taken into account agents’ role and background, the context in which it takes place as well as intra- and inter-organisational culture. In fact, enhancing competitive advantage on the basis of both overlap and diversity of knowledge is an important capability within today’s supply chains. On this foundation, the present paper aims to address business scenario and logistic systems from a viewpoint that approaches competitive advantage in terms of sustainability and effectiveness. Some aspects impacting on dynamics in logistics will be circumscribed in agreement with a holistic perspective embracing context, organisation and individual levels. A descriptive model and further steps toward an approach based on a long-term learning process will be then introduced.
1 Introduction The manufacturing and service industry have changed in recent decades. A relevant side of this evolutionary and dynamical process has been the pursuit for new and attractive markets as well as the search for high quality and low cost sources of raw materials, parts and products. Both fronts have ceaselessly boosted the globalisation of commerce and production, and made material and information flows more dynamic – due to vibrant demand and supply – and structurally complex. Therefore, the enhancement of processes and systems that fit and connect these fronts should be aspired. Nevertheless, this connection must be consistent with firms’ strategy which delineates how activities and processes are planned, coordinated and per-
H.-D. Haasis et al., Dynamics in Logistics DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-76862-3, © Springer 2008
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B. Scholz-Reiter, E. Morosini Frazzon
formed. Business strategy also deals with the allocation of finite resources (Porter 1996) which should be, in order to generate unique competitive advantage: valuable, in the sense that they exploit opportunities and/or neutralises threats in a firm’s environment; rare among current and potential competition; imperfectly imitable – either through specific historical conditions, causal ambiguity, or social complexity; and without strategically substitutes (Barney 1991). Moreover, the adoption of business strategies that meet the needs of the enterprise and its stakeholders today while sustaining the resources that will be needed in the future (IISD 1992) is a concurrent business obligation. In fact, business networks have to be effective and, at the same time, to sustain their economic, ecological and soc
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