Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intellectual ...

Ridha Derrouiche et al.
among autonomous partners involved in joint efforts to effectively meet end customer needs with
lower costs (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Supply chain collaboration (Matopoulos et al, 2007)
The advent <strong>of</strong> supply chain collaboration creates <strong>the</strong> need, at inter-enterprises level, to pay special
attention to <strong>the</strong> understanding <strong>of</strong> collaboration in order to prepare <strong>the</strong> partners to create collaborative
efforts successfully (Lambert et al. 2004). This section presents a review <strong>of</strong> literature relevant to this
research. This embraces many subjects in relative to main cores <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> study which are momentarily
described as follows.
2.1 A framework for measuring impact <strong>of</strong> collaboration on B2B-SCM interaction
The academic review and <strong>the</strong> empirical studies related to internal and external collaborations, led us
to note that <strong>the</strong> different researchers analyzed do not agree on a same set <strong>of</strong> attributes to
characterize <strong>the</strong> various relations. Even more, <strong>the</strong> attributes used to characterize a same relation, are
<strong>of</strong>ten not <strong>the</strong> same ones.
Indeed several authors developed this question under various points <strong>of</strong> view such as: <strong>the</strong> degree <strong>of</strong>
engagement in a relation (Morgan and Hunt, 1994), <strong>the</strong> long-term orientation <strong>of</strong> a relation (Ganesan,
1994), <strong>the</strong> dependence between <strong>the</strong> partners (Crowston, 94; Lusch and Brown, 1996), <strong>the</strong> degree <strong>of</strong>
exchange and share information (Lee and al., 1997 and Li, 2002), <strong>the</strong> duration <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> relation (Ching,
96); its formalization (Venkatraman and Bensaou, 1996); <strong>the</strong> centralization <strong>of</strong> decisions (Angeles and
Nath, 2001). The confidence between partners (Doney and Cannon, 1997) appears as an important
variable for analyzing relationship (Uzzi, 1997). The table below (Table 1) syn<strong>the</strong>sizes and classifies
<strong>the</strong> various studies according to <strong>the</strong> attributes used. In <strong>the</strong>se works, it is obvious that <strong>the</strong> majority <strong>of</strong>
researches on <strong>the</strong> collaborative relations do not agree on a unique set <strong>of</strong> criteria (attributes) to typify
relations between partners <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> same supply chain. After analyzing <strong>the</strong> independent attributes that
can characterize a relation, this research will give a brief presentation <strong>of</strong> various frameworks
characterizing a relation.
The outline proposed in this subsection climaxes diverse scopes which can portray each type <strong>of</strong>
relation; it is based on <strong>the</strong> above mentioned two levels: <strong>the</strong> context <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> relation and its performance
(Figure 1). The chief level is composed <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> following five dimensions: 1) Climate <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> relation, 2)
Structure <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> relation, 3) Information Technologies (IT) used 4) Lifecycle <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> relation and
External context. The subsequent level is based on dual attributes: “<strong>the</strong> perceived satisfaction <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>
relation” and “<strong>the</strong> perceived effectiveness <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> relation”. In this framework <strong>the</strong> same dimensions and
attributes can be used to analyze different types <strong>of</strong> relations; <strong>the</strong>ir differences rely on <strong>the</strong> maturity
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