On Characterizing the 4 C’s in Supply Chain Management

Supply chain management is a field at the confluence of many other disciplines; it has been studied under a number of perspectives, which has played a role for the crossbreeding of the discipline. In this paper, we propose a typology of supply chain configurations that contributes to tie together terms that have been used disjointedly for describing various forms of supply chain. It also enables researchers to develop theories related to the identified typology, rather than continue expanding efforts on separate, unconnected studies. The typology is configurational, consistent, and based on the correspondence (Sheppard and Sherman, 1998) between Fiske’s theory of relational forms (1990) and the concept of interdependence, analyzed in the context of supply chain management. Our framework encompasses four main configurations the communicative, coordinated, collaborative, and co-opetitive and we refer to these as the 4 C’s in supply chain management. We discuss the benefits of the proposed typology from managerial and research perspectives, and suggest some research extensions.