Collaborative e-work parallelism in supply decisions networks: the chemical dimension

In today’s increasingly networked and interconnected environments, business processes and associated decisions tend to span across organizational boundaries, making traditional centralized coordination impractical and/or unfeasible. Furthermore, collaborative networked organizations need to be able to respond to rapidly changing demands and requirements, under uncertain conditions and without centralized control. This situation emphasizes the need for adaptive, distributed, and self-coordinated supply network decisions models. This study focuses on the efficient coordination of parallel, reconfigurable, inter-organizational supply operations. The chemical dimension of collaborative e-work parallelism is introduced, including a novel market-based mechanism that supports supply networks’ parallel and decentralized reconfiguration. The newly developed approach is illustrated by examples from a global industry network, demonstrating its advantages, and identifying its limitations.