Good Governance in Global Supply Chains from Eight Perspectives

Abstract

The development of a reactive branch for “tomorrow’s logistics”, which considers itself to become an active leading authority, demands – especially under the conditions of permanent change – an agreement on Good Governance between those responsible for tasks of the supply chain management. Observations of behavior in business relations across small and medium sized companies indicate that the communication between varying actors about sustainable compliance with different demands is impeded by complex structures of the working reality. In a study based on several years of a participatory observation of significant actors at the interface of industry, forwarder and customs administration in the inland and abroad a model was developed that may assist professionals to gain an active “understanding of the other”. It shall facilitate the joint agreement on similarities and differences of the respective realms in which the participants of global supply networks work with each other while facing partly opposed interests. Using methods of comparative political research, reasons were discovered as to why cooperation under partial competition conditions is successful or not.