Opportunities for Enhancing Buyer-Supplier Relationship: Inspirations from the Natural World

Though the firms in a supply chain realize the importance of effective coordination and collaboration often times their relationship with their suppliers fail to be productive. In this study we try to identify some of the... [ view full abstract ]

Though the firms in a supply chain realize the importance of effective coordination and collaboration often times their relationship with their suppliers fail to be productive. In this study we try to identify some of the issues plaguing the buyer supplier relationships by doing a review of the extant literature. We then tried to draw some inspiration from the natural world by studying the phenomenon of the common mychorhizzal networks (CMN) in the forestry literature. We identified the importance of asymmetric distribution of resources among the parties in the form of reciprocal altruism (aspects of cooperation) and explored the role of system integrators.

We then extend the existing literature by providing a framework which has been deduced from the concepts that we have learned from the CMN.