Learning and trust in supply chain management: Disintermediation, ethics and cultural pressures in brief dynamic alliances

Abstract

We know that firms in developed nations have practised supply chain management (SCM) for decades, but we ask here if they will be able to progress well under the modern regime of harder and faster e-just-in-time systems. The end-to-end supply chain is both a virtual and a physical reality linking the customer to many value-added manufacturers and assemblers with the intervention and support of logistics providers; and we must also be concerned with the reverse supply chain. For the purposes of this paper we assume the chains to be terminated mainly in Europe and the USA, but with origins having global outreach. We further assume SCM to be concerned not only with data and goods, but also in managing cultural and ethical issues. Essentially we shall discuss the challenges of knowledge management (KM) and organisational learning (OL) in SCM systems that embrace firms located in many countries, western as well as Asian, which, to promote KM and OL must have more (or less) permeable organisational boundaries and must learn to trust each other regardless of their ethic differences.