WHAT RELATIONSHIP SHOULD WE HAVE IN INFORMATION AGE?

Abstract

Nowadays, Information Technology (IT) is widely exploited in Multinational Enterprises (MNE) and it brings about significant changes in different spheres of business. In logistics management, modern information technology will offer opportunities for fast and safe transmission and processing of extensive amounts of data, both internally for users within the company and externally for suppliers and customers. In supply chain management, such information sharing caused revolutionary changes in relationships among supply chains. Our study tries to discuss how IT changed the relationships in supply chains. An ABB business unit is used to demonstrate our empirical findings. The result is that IT does not appear to have simply increased firms’ reliance on market coordination, but rather to have engendered new forms of organization such as "networks", "virtual organizations". The trend will be that all partners among the supply chain will be integrated as one organization to meet customers’ demand and provide best services for them.