Developing a framework for describing and analyzing misalignments in the supply chain - Illustrated with the Swedish Cash Supply Chain

Abstract: Background: Narayanan & Raman (2004) present what they call an approach to treat incentive misalignments. It consists of three steps: Accept the premise, Pinpoint the cause, and Align or redesign. The first step, accept the premise, is simply acknowledging that there is such a thing as incentive misalignments. The second step, pinpoint the cause, is the process of identifying and describing what misalignment that a supply chain suffers from. The third step, align or redesign, is the process of aligning the misalignments in a supply chain, which can be accomplished by different solutions. However, their approach needs further research in order to become a practical tool for describing and analyzing misalignments in the supply chain. Research question: How can misalignments in the supply chain, which relate to changes in supply chain structures, processes, and management components, be described and analyzed? Purpose: Create a framework for describing and analyzing misalignments in the supply chain, which relate to changes in supply chain structures, processes, and management components. Theory: This research is based on two streams of theory: supply chain management and supply chain incentive alignment. As a starting point, several different supply chain management frameworks were reviewed in order to find a suitable approach for this research. The framework that was found most suitable was the Lambert et al. (1998) framework, which divides supply chain management into three elements: structures, processes, and IV management components. This framework was further developed in order to fit this research. Supply chain incentive alignment is a fairly small and new stream of research covering incentive alignment, agency theory, and contracts and relational governance. One of the most influential publications within this field is Narayanan & Raman (2004), who argue that a supply chain works well if its companies' incentives are aligned. Based on their perspective, a framework for misalignments was developed. Methodology: Based on the systems approach, a single-case study with embedded design including several embedded cases from the same supply chain was deployed. This was done according to the abductive research approach, which favourable when extending existing and developing new theory. In order to describe the case study, data was collected through observations and different types of interviews. This data was later analyzed through pattern matching so that the purpose of the research could be reached. Conclusions: In conclusion, an approach to describe and analyze misalignments in the supply chain has been developed. However, this approach need further empirical testing in order to be fully validated. The approach consists of three steps: 1. Identify changes in the supply chain, 2. Identify misalignments, and 3. Identify symptoms. For every step respectively, a specific framework was developed in order to facilitate the identification processes.