Impacts of the Core Enterprise - Customers Boundaries across the Supply Chain on Performance: An Empirical Study

摘要

With the rapid development of the global economic integration, market competition is becoming more and more fierce and customers'demands are becoming more complex and diverse. All these have imposed a series of difficulties for traditional enterprises. Supply chain management (SCM) can solve some kinds of these problems very well. In supply chain management , both supplier management and customer management should be given sufficient attention. Customer management is more important because customers are the profit source of the core enterprise and a way of obtaining competitive advantage. Based on theories of SCM, customer relation management ( CRM ) and organizational boundary, this paper analyzes the boundaries between the core enterprises and their customers, discusses the impacts of the boundaries on the core performance of the enterprises. An empirical study is carried out based on the International Manufacturing Strategy survey data. Suggestions are also proposed to break through such boundaries.