Bharat Maheshwari, Vinod Kumar , Uma Kumar, and Sandeep Sood

Supply Chain Partnerships are today a fact of business life. For reasons ranging from vertical disaggregation (e.g. Powell, 1987) to shrinking product lifecycle (e.g. Ohmae, 1989), to growing capital investment requirements (e.g. Doz, 1988), to the desire of increasing competitiveness through organizational learning (Senge, 1992), companies are forming new partnerships and alliances at an ever increasing rate. Research on inter-firm relationships has occupied a prominent position in management studies over the past 15 years resulting in a vast and diverse literature.

In practice, companies today widely recognize the potential advantages of collaborative arrangements and partnerships over arm’s-length trading or full integration. The need to manage supply chain partnerships efficiently and effectively is arguably a major new frontier in supply chain management. However, very few empirical supported studies are available which provide guidance on managing supply chain partnerships. Apparently, researchers have found this phenomenon very hard to study as multiple companies are involved.

This paper takes a multiple case study approach focuses on studying the key issues managers face in managing partnerships overtime. We build upon the theoretical platform provided by Maheshwari et al. (2006), by providing empirical support and validation to a model of key issues faced in various stages when developing a supply chain partnership. The paper documents and analyses managerial responses and successful strategies for dealing with key issues in managing supply chain partnership. It provides managers with valuable directions and examples to use the validated model in building and managing successful partnerships.