Faced with increasing pressure to improve responsiveness to rapidly changing market needs, firms must respond to the challenge of how to improve supply reliability and quality, while simultaneously reducing costs. This has led to an increase in outsourcing and the adoption of supplier alliances...

Purpose – The paper seeks to examine the impact of operational quality management practices within the supply chain. Design/methodology/approach – Regression analysis is used to identify relationships between a firm's internal and external (customer and supplier focused) operational quality...

Purpose – This paper aims to explore whether firms that integrate only with partners adjacent to them in the supply chain exhibit different patterns of supply chain practice and performance than those that also integrate with partners more distant in the supply chain....