Electronic supply network coordination in agrifood networks: Barriers, potentials, and path dependencies

Supply chain management (SCM) has emerged as cross functional, cross company concept to improve coordination of entire value chains through coordinated actions of all companies. It has received a major push from the availability of internet-based information and communication technologies. The conditions in certain sectors are favorable for a realization of chain wide SCM. In other sectors, however, conditions are more complex and companies and value chains still struggle to exploit the potentials from SCM, in particular when it comes to cross enterprise coordination. This paper analyses the case of a complex supply network and follows the research question why complex networks do not exploit the potentials from cross enterprise SCM.