Cooperation in Supply Chains: from practical problems to conceptual models

Improving the performance of supply chains is a critical issue in nowadays industry. In that purpose, cooperation between partners motivates a great attention. Technical aspects of current cooperation procedures as promoted by large companies are firstly described, and compared to some real problems identified after interviews in the aeronautical industry. Technical issues are in our opinion insufficient for fully explaining the described situations. Therefore, behavioral concepts suggested in the literature of management and sociology of organizations are explored and conceptual models linking the selected concepts are suggested, allowing to have a deeper understanding of real cooperation situations.