MTT070F

Temporary

Theoretical Perspectives on Supply Chain Governance

7.5

Third-cycle course

7311 (Department of Machine Technology / Engineering Logistics)

2025-12-18

Professor Daniel Sjöberg

English

If sufficient demand

To provide PhD students with knowledge and understanding, from different theoretical perspectives, of governance issues and governance mechanisms in inter-organizational supply chains (SC) of multiple organizations including private, public, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and non-profit organizations.
Governance is a concept describing an organizational construction or institutional framework, while governance mechanisms are the concrete management and control activities that describe how the organization’s required behavior will be motivated, influenced and established. Extant SCM literature is largely being limited to relationships between for-profit firms while research gaps are increasingly identified in understanding inter-organizational governance and collaboration between public and private, direct and indirect, actors in supply chains as well as exploring the role of policymakers and other actors. SC Governance has recently been discussed in different empirical areas related to e.g. risk management, environmentally sustainability and human rights and different theoretical lenses have been used.
The course has the following objectives:
• to increase understanding of the importance of and challenges of supply chain governance.
• to increase understanding of different theoretical lenses of governance and supply chain governance.
• to inspire the development of a joint framework for observing and analyzing supply chain governance and governance mechanisms.
• to provide both new and classic articles that often are referred to in the SCM domain when it comes to SC governance, supporting students to better position their own research.
• to develop students to be able to reflect and describe how governance can be done in inter-organizational supply chains.

The course will have an interactive design. Thus, the doctoral students are expected to be prepared, engaged, and willing to explore and discuss a variety of lenses for studying inter-organizational governance of supply chains. Student will also present the take-away of the assigned reading for each seminar, as well as stepwise reflect on their own research.
The course is based on an introductory lecture and a seminar series that will include the following: (i) Introduction of Supply chain governance, (ii) Conceptual model, (iii) Strategic management and Transaction cost lenses, (iv) Political science and Public Administration lenses. (v) SC phenomena studied, (vi) Governance mechanism, (vii) Empirical studies of inter-organizational governance, (vii) Presentation of individual frameworks.
The students will also examine and compare different articles, and especially reflect on how 3 different articles have empirically studied and reported on inter-organizational governance.

• understand how governance and governance mechanisms are defined in different domains relevant to supply chain management.
• understand and be able to reflect upon how different theoretical perspectives distinguish and can be combined to study SC governance.
• demonstrate increased knowledge about supply chain governance and how it can be studied (understood, described, and analysed).

• be able to review and discuss extant research on inter-organizational governance in terms of strengths and weaknesses related to supply chain issues in general and their own research in particular.
• be able to develop and discuss conceptual frameworks that could help to plan and describe futures studies of inter-organizational governance of supply chains.
• be able to review and discuss how inter-organizational governance has been empirically studied and reported.

be able to critically evaluate journal articles that discuss inter-organizational governance and be able to present their findings both orally in group and in written format.

Lectures

Seminars

Self-study literature review

Seminars, some digital. About 4-5 seminars

Written report

Written assignments

Seminars given by participants

Mandatory participation at seminars. Presentation of participants (including written documentation as PPT), seminars given by participants (discussing articles, including written documentation as PPT). Final written report (summarizing, reflecting and positioning SC Governance research to one’s own individual research).

Failed, pass

PhD-students doing research connected to supply chain management, operations management, risk management, or related where interorganizational governance issues are relevant.

First students enrolled as doctoral students in Supply chain ng. Second students in related areas such as Production, Marketing, Risk management etc. If needed, students will be prioritized (within the prioritization groups) based on if they are active in research related to Governance.

 

The literature consists of a collection of articles in the field. The list of articles is obtained from the course coordinator and is published no later than two weeks before the start of the course.

MTT070F

2025-12-18

Professor Daniel Sjöberg