Valid from: Spring 2026
Decided by: Professor Daniel Sjöberg
Date of establishment: 2025-12-18
Division: Engineering Logistics
Course type: Third-cycle course
Teaching language: English
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.
Knowledge and Understanding
For a passing grade the doctoral student must
Competences and Skills
For a passing grade the doctoral student must
Judgement and Approach
For a passing grade the doctoral student must 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.
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.
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.
Types of instruction: Lectures, seminars, self-study literature review. Seminars, some digital. About 4-5 seminars
Examination formats: 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).
Grading scale: Failed, pass
Examiner:
Assumed prior knowledge: PhD-students doing research connected to supply chain management, operations management, risk management, or related where interorganizational governance issues are relevant.
Selection criteria: 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.
Course coordinators: