Theories
Currently there is a gap in the literature available on supply chain management studies: there is no theoretical support for explaining the existence and the boundaries of supply chain management. A few authors such as Halldorsson, et al. (2003), Ketchen and Hult (2006) and Lavassani, et al. (2009) have tried to provide theoretical foundations for different areas related to supply chain by employing organizational theories. These theories include:
- Resource-based view (RBV)
- Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA)
- Knowledge-Based View (KBV)
- Strategic Choice Theory (SCT)
- Agency Theory (AT)
- Institutional theory (InT)
- Systems Theory (ST)
- Network Perspective (NP)
- Materials Logistics Management (MLM)
- Just-in-Time (JIT)
- Material Requirements Planning (MRP)
- Theory of Constraints (TOC)
- Performance Information Procurement Systems (PIPS)
- Performance Information Risk Management System (PIRMS)
- Total Quality Management (TQM)
- Agile Manufacturing
- Time Based Competition (TBC)
- Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM)
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Requirements Chain Management (RCM)
- Available-to-promise (ATP)
- and many more
However, the unit of analysis of most of these theories is not the system “supply chain”, but another system such as the “firm” or the “supplier/buyer relationship”. Among the few exceptions is the relational view, which outlines a theory for considering dyads and networks of firms as a key unit of analysis for explaining superior individual firm performance (Dyer and Singh, 1998).
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“Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“Whatever practical people may say, this world is, after all, absolutely governed by ideas, and very often by the wildest and most hypothetical ideas. It is a matter of the very greatest importance that our theories of things that seem a long way apart from our daily lives, should be as far as possible true, and as far as possible removed from error.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“The theories and speculations of men concern us more than their puny accomplishment. It is with a certain coldness and languor that we loiter about the actual and so-called practical.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)