Nathalie Merminod

Streamlining humanitarian and peacekeeping supply chains

Purpose – Over the last decade, temporary supply chains (TSCs) have become a well-recognized logistics model. In TSCs, supply chain members are organized for an ad hoc project; they pool resources in order to make the project successful. Although it might be perceived that TSCs are unstable due to their temporary nature, this paper aims to discuss how TSCs can be managed so as to be both stable and agile, while achieving the stated objectives; since the stability-agility context could be really challenging in humanitarian and peacekeeping supply chains, this is the one that has been selected. Design/methodology/approach – The authors reviewed the literature, research reports and electronic documents on humanitarian and peacekeeping supply chains, to understand the main challenges in terms of managerial and social impacts of logistical operations in a disaster context. Findings – The disaster context is very peculiar, since it requires tremendous agility when a natural or man-made catastrophe hits, so that...

Convincing a Supplier to Be Its Preferred Customer: A Case Study (Extended Abstract)

To perform well, firms need competent suppliers who are ready to invest time and resources. However, the best suppliers can choose the clients that they prefer to work closely with; therefore, clients have to compete for these suppliers’ attention and find ways to become more attractive. Developing different relationships with suppliers according to the role they are expected to play for the firm is vital (Bensaou 1999) and, regardless of the nature of the relationship, it is important to define and implement appropriate operating procedures to develop a cooperative advantage (Kanter 1994) or a collaborative advantage (Dyer 2000). Marketing strategies used by clients to attract customers are well studied; the “other side” of the attractiveness issue exists as well (Brokaw and Davidson 1978; Leenders and Blenkhorn 1988). More recently, the related concepts of customer attractiveness, supplier satisfaction, and preferential customer status have interested several researchers in supply management. In this empirical research, we decided to focus on the concept of “preferred customer.” Since this concept is complex and strongly determined by contextual factors, we chose the case study method as an explanatory method (Johnston et al. 1999; Dubois and Araujo 2007), to understand how a purchasing firm can convince a supplier to be its preferred customer.

Manager son attractivité pour devenir client privilégié d’un fournisseur. Une étude de cas

RÉSUMÉ Pour créer de la valeur, les entreprises acheteuses doivent travailler avec les fournisseurs qui répondent le mieux à leurs besoins. Or, ces fournisseurs ont la plupart du temps le choix de leurs clients. Il faut donc les convaincre de devenir client privilégié afin d’obtenir des avantages par rapport aux concurrents. Cette approche est d’autant plus cruciale quand l’entreprise acheteuse n’est pas, du fait de son volume d’achat, un client privilégié potentiel. À l’aide d’une étude de cas, cet article étudie le management de cette attractivité et le rôle du service achats dans cette démarche.