Strategies for managing knowledge in Supply Chains

Supply chains are often considered as “extended enterprises”. Thus, Information Systems conceived for individual organizations, such as ERP or Business Intelligence solutions, are supposed, once “extended” , to be capable to effectively manage knowledge flows throughout the chain. On the other hand, Supply Chains are considered by other scholars as completely different from traditional organizations, be they extended or not: according to such approaches, supply chains have a network nature. If that is the case, top-down efforts to build hard-wired processes integration should be abandoned, and innovation should be aimed at creating collaborative, web-based ICT tools for extemporary problem solving and relationship management. This paper seeks to integrate these two opposing views. We propose a framework linking market environments, value chain configurations, coordination mechanisms and learning strategies. Four fundamental types of supply chain are identified, and for each type the most strategic ISs are suggested.