A Cooperation and Coordination Perspective on Supply Chain Collaboration Dynamics.

Collaborative efforts between buyers and suppliers evolve over time, often via several complex dynamic patterns. However, remarkably little is known known about when and why these patterns occur. Also, understanding about the roles of cooperation (i.e., the alignment of goals and objectives) and coordination (i.e., the alignment of partners' actions) in supply chain collaborations is limited, in particular regarding how cooperation and coordination interact. Considering these knowledge gaps, we aim to explore how cooperation and coordination together shape supply chain collaboration efforts over time. Combining qualitative data from interviews, observations and written documents with transaction data on service-level performance, we analyze the introduction of Vendor-Managed Inventory (VMI) in the supply chain of a large retailer. Specifically, we studied eight contrasting supplier- retailer dyads for three years to delineate changes in supplier- retailer relationships and supply chain performance over time. Contingencies of these contrasting dyads drive differences in behavior. Considering both cooperation and coordination when studying supply chain collaboration explains the occurrence of different dynamic patterns and can have predictive value for translating the short-term effects into long term expectations for different kinds of suppliers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]