The Framework of Supply Chain Coordination Mechanism Choice: A View of Transaction Costs

The most of present researches on supply chain coordination concentrated on construction of coordination mechanisms for better solutions in practice without the problem of transactions cost by mechanisms under consideration, and requires improvement. This paper examines the nature and characteristics of supply chain coordination and the theory of specific supply network boundaries. An enhanced framework for original sources of problems in supply chain coordination is proposed to classify and structure those problems. The determination of the improvement direction for some coordination mechanism can be qualitatively achieved under the employment of the system with five dimensions measurement to control and evaluate coordination mechanism through analyzing the rate of marginal contribution to specific sub-supply-network from incremental transactions cost in each dimension. In the final, a completely improved framework for coordination mechanism choosing is drawn out by coupling the theories of transactions cost and the concept of supply network boundaries, with a model of "Triple-A" as the source the supply chain competitive advantages.