Partnership like relationships exists between consumers and suppliers Essay

Partnership like relationships exists amid consumers and suppliers and provides advantages much(prenominal)(prenominal) as great quality - Essay ExampleTheoretical frameworks exist in abundant supply that try to delineate the advantages of pen up cooperation between partners in supply stove mechanisms. In practice however things are far to a greater extent different as the specific attri only whenes of much(prenominal) working relationships are non fully dumb (Goffin, 2006). Overall there has been a move towards underweight cooperation based relationships though the actual realised benefits of such relationships is not fully established and is generally overestimated. The grade of relationships between various entities in the supply chain domain varies from transactional type relationships to close and more collaborative relationships. Another telephone number of importance that needs light is the use of the term partnership that has been used to describe such relationshi ps though there is no legal or other justification for using such a term. The use of the term partnership has caused confusion in respect of these relationships on a number of fronts though three major reasons are more significant. These reasons are Customer / supplier relationships are purely business relationships though they may be described as partnerships. However the use of the term does not indicate any legal privileges are inferred as in the case of a business partnership or alliance. This clearly demonstrates that customer / supplier partnerships do not carry any legal value and are instead purely voluntary in nature Any partnership like relationships between supply chain entities are not absolute but are rather context dependent. The extent of closeness of the subject relationship determines the variations in such relationships and previous research supports such contentions (Ellram, 1991) (Saxton, 1997). It can be inferred from this that the particular degree of closeness in a relationship provides the necessary insight to explore such relationships although the degree of closeness is not absolute Relationships based on the partnership model alone cannot attempt to explain the supplier side of relationships fully although this is universally assumed as such (Goffin, 2006). A large amount of material exists on the value of close customer and supplier relationships although this is not relevant to the issue at hand. Instead this text will focus more on why such close relationships are not performing as coveted or expected using three different approaches. These approaches include assessing the appropriateness of close relationships between customers and suppliers creation of and sustainability of close relationships between customers and suppliers contextual nature of close relationships between customers and suppliers. 1. Appropriateness The majority of literature on relationships between suppliers and customers has implied that close relationships are desirable though such literature has failed to provide due affection to any contextual causes or to the effectiveness of such relationships. As an example a large amount of literature has concentrated on implying that manufacturers and their suppliers should have close relationships and have indicated that these relationships have evolved into partnerships over the last two decades. However such literature has failed to account for a few transactional relationships that not only exist but are also desirable. Similarly there has been talk of evolution of such relations