Strategically managed buyer-supplier relationships across supply chain: An exploratory study

The acceleration of change, global economy and the business challenges has made organizations to think and integrate diverse competitive strategies in to the system. There has been an increasing emphasis on buyer-supplier relationships in the academic community and in the international business to improve competitiveness and profitability of organizations by proposing different strategies, organizational structure, system, tools and techniques for how to select the right partner, establish the proper relationship and adapt adequately to the internal and external changes. Moreover, the system has witnessed a transformation in which suppliers and customers are inextricably linked throughout the entire sequence of supply chain. This paper aims to develop the buyer-supplier typology for strategic archetypes of contractual relationships. The typology reflects a buyer perspective ranging from arm's length relationship to strategic partnerships and represents a supplier segmentation tool which helps identify what types of competence and capability relate to each individual sourcing practice. The paper includes the comprehensive study of current state of the art of the survey based empirical research on sourcing practices and supplier selection, as they play a vital role in managing supply chain.