Learning and trust in supply chain management

Abstract

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. We assume these to be concentrated mainly in Europe and the USA, but with origins having global outreach – their management must concern themselves with explicit and tacit factors embracing the culture and ethics of people having diverse national origins. Essentially, we will discuss the challenges of knowledge management and organisational learning in the SCM systems that embrace firms located in many countries, Western as well as Asian, which have more (or less) permeable organisational boundaries and who must learn to trust each other regardless of their ethic differences.