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The nature of buyer‐supplier relationships has been closely linked to nation specific explanations and concern has been expressed in literature regarding the transferability of co‐design best practices to different firms and countries. On the other hand, many attempts to isolate best practices and to apply them on a global scale have been proposed in the literature. Contributes to the issue by analysing a controversial case study based on the Italian automotive industry. Results show that few aspects of the Japanese contextual features and American ones existed when the major Italian car maker decided to outsource component design and dramatically change its supply chain management approach. Moreover, despite the massive involvement of suppliers at a very early stage of the car maker new product development process, not all the best practices deemed to be necessary when implementing a co‐operative buyer‐supplier relationship have been applied. Argues that these results lead us to question the very nature of effective buyer‐supplier relationships as described by the dominant literature and suggests implications for practitioners and for future research.

This work presents the results of the survey "Organisational structures and logistics in the branded product history of the grocery section in Italy" developed with the aim of pointing out the organisational structures for the logistics co‐ordination of successful firms. Starting from a review of the literature on the main logistics organisation theories, this paper presents an organisational analysis of 118 industrial firms, working in Italy in the grocery sector, carried out for the main logistics activities. On the basis of this anlaysis, a classifying model of the organisational configurations presently adopted in Italy for internal integration is proposed. According to the model, six different organisational solutions have been singled out: integrated logistics, partially integrated logistics, bipartite logistics, distribution logistics, manufacturing logistics, and split logistics.

Notes that logistics costs in the grocery sector, in Italy, are about 25,000 billion lire and that in order to reduce these costs logistics integration has to be improved between institutions of the distribution channel. Focuses on two of the main institutions of the grocery distribution channel: branded product industry and large‐scale trade. Referring to these institutions and to the logistics functions they carry out, analyses integration areas in order to identify some organizational and managerial solutions for improving interfunctional and interorganizational co‐ordination. In particular, divides these solutions into three main groups according to the level of integration they refer to: internal integration (inside each business), vertical integration (between businesses located at different stages of the channel) and horizontal integration (between different businesses located on the same level of the channel). Internal and horizontal integration are the prerequisites for achieving vertical integration and consequently for achieving synergies between the institutions involved.

A unitary scheme which classifies certain subsystems, within production management, according to push and pull logics is proposed. The three subsystems described are: inventory management, manufacturing priority assignment and material picking and moving, and production planning. The classification proposed is a starting point for establishing application requirements. The characteristics of the production context, not the inherent logic, determine the choice of the most feasible techniques. Techniques with different logics can hence coexist in the same production system.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to devise a scorecard providing a suite of indicators that give innovation managers a value-oriented, fast but holistic view of open innovation (OI) adoption in their organisations.Design/methodology/approachThe theoretical framework is built after a thorough review of OI literature. The managerial tool is developed from the theoretical framework, constructing indicators that can be easily generated by processing data within information systems of companies.FindingsThe scorecard provides a multi-dimensional conceptualisation of OI adoption in organisations, investigating environment, collaboration and importing/exporting mechanisms. Six indicators are defined: innovation funds, OI employees, collaboration costs, collaboration revenues, importing costs and exporting revenues.Research limitations/implicationsThe devised tool enables the assessment of openness through objective and available data, systematically updated within the information systems of companies and, hence, easily exploitable by innovation managers. In order to meet such conditions, several aspects emerged from the literature review, although relevant, were left out.Practical implicationsThree dashboards can be derived by exploiting the information available in the scorecard. With the use of such tools innovation managers can both assess the open behaviours of their companies – identifying the trajectories to follow in order to improve performance – and benchmark different OI practices either inside or outside the organisation.Originality/valueThe scorecard allows innovation managers both to carry out a cost-benefit analysis, evaluating if their organisations are effectively and efficiently generating outputs from OI with the committed resources, and to identify a virtuous circle between the company's commitment and reputation, joint development, and innovation market opportunities.

PurposeThe paper presents a research methodology that could be used to carry out a systematic literature review on the current state of the art of the technological development in the field of the digitalization and unphysicalization of supply chains (SCs). A three-dimensional conceptual framework focusing on the relationship between Digital Technologies (DTs), business processes and SC performance is presented. The study identifies the emerging practices and areas of SC management that could be positively affected by the implementation of DTs. With this in mind, the emerging practices have a high probability to be considered future best practices.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review was conducted on DTs in SC management. The methodology used aims to algorithmically and objectively standardize the information incorporated into thousands of scientific documents. Selected papers were analyzed to investigate the recent literature on SC digitalization and unphysicalization. A total of 87 DTs were selected to be analyzed and subsequently grouped into 11 macro-categories. 17 business processes linked to SC management are taken into account and 17 different impacts on SC management are presented. From a set of 1,585 papers, 5,060 emerging practices were collected and singularly summarized combining DT, business process and impact on SC performance.FindingsA unique analytical perspective provided represents an important evolution when trying to organize the current literature on SC management. The widely used DTs in the practices and the most considered business processes and impacts are highlighted and described. The three-dimensional conceptual framework is graphically represented to allow for the emergence of the best combinations of DT, business process and impact on SC performance. These combinations suggest the most promising areas for the implementation of the emerging practices for SC digitalization and unphysicalization. Additional findings identify and define the most important contexts in which Big Data contributes to SC performance.Originality/valueThe research methodology used is offering progress through which to systemize the current practices as well as detect the potential of digitalization and unphysicalization under the three-dimensional conceptual framework. The paper provides a structured proposal for promising future research directions, assuming that the five research gaps as findings of this research could be the basis for prescriptions, as well as a future research agenda and theory development. Moreover, this research contributes to current managerial issues concerning SC management, referred to data and information management, efficiency and productivity of SC processes, market performance, SC relationship management and risk management in SC.