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The aim of this paper is to develop a multidisciplinary approach towards supply chain partnering to increase sensitivity for providing more powerful explanations of this complex, dynamic and sometimes paradoxical phenomenon.

The methodology employed is conceptual theory development, grounded upon transaction cost economics, organizational design, and organization behaviour theory.

The main concerns of partnering are appropriation, coordination and adaptation. The relative importance of each concern varies depending on the partnership's stage of development. The paper argues that the different bodies of literature each emphasize a different concern. Consequently, the multidisciplinary approach developed has a temporal nature and the three mentioned bodies of literature fit in different stages with associated concerns.

Propositions for empirical testing are developed, regarding, for example, the impact of adaptation on the risk of appropriation.

Understanding the interrelation between the different concerns can increase the success of a partnership.

The temporal approach contributes by drawing a full picture of supply chain partnering, which is not obtained by viewing each one of its constituting bodies of literature in isolation.

Interoperability standards are a crucial aspect in the development of B2B e‐business. The aim of this paper is to understand how standardisation evolves by analysing the interplay between activities and stakeholders within the process. Unlike most of the IS research that focuses on the underlying technologies within standards, this study explores the standardisation processes and the interaction between the different participants.

This issue was explored with a case study of the standardisation activity in the Port Community of Barcelona. The primary source of data was semi‐structured interviews with members of the standardisation committee, direct observation in meetings and related documentation. Data coding and analysis, using qualitative methods, proceeded in parallel with data collection.

The analysis reveals critical success factors in the urgency perceived by the dominant stakeholder and the inclusion of a workgroup manager. Also the workgroup manager can have a significant positive impact by focusing on sense‐making activities during the first steps of the process.

The study is based on a single organisation and a largely retrospective analysis of two standardisation exercises.

This paper contributes significantly to the literature on vertical B2B standardisation by combining process theories and stakeholder analysis approaches. It demonstrates greater insight into managing successful standards initiatives by taking this holistic approach to the research.

Increasingly, two key trends – value‐ and cost‐conscious customers, and globalization of markets and supply sources – are shifting the competitive focus from the competitive advantage of firms to competitive advantages of entire supply chains. At the same time, the possibilities for flexibility and coordination inherent in modern information and communication technologies are making it possible to design and follow a much greater variety of organization and governance strategies for delivering customer value. Contributes primarily to the development of general principles for ICT‐enabled redesign of supply chains. Rather than examine the individual impact and design implications of each new ICT innovation, proposes principles of abstraction that can be used to frame supply‐chain redesign options and decisions. Concludes with how these principles lead to flexibility in the design of various supply chain options, thereby providing cost and value advantages for the supply chain.

This paper aims to develop the concept of interorganizational adaptation (IOAD) in customer‐supplier dyads, and more specifically its behavioral dimension and its main impacting factor constituted by power.

Building on social capital literature, the paper develops a comprehensive classification of behavioral IOAD. The proposed cognitive, relational and structural sub‐dimensions are explored through an embedded multi‐case study in the European food industry. Data are collected at both sides of the dyads, providing a rich account of supply chain partnering.

The cases show that acknowledgement and understanding of the behavioral dimension of IOAD, besides the more elaborate technical dimension, aids in explaining several paradoxical situations. Furthermore, the case data confirm the projected relationship between power and technical IOAD; dominated relationships present unilateral technical IOAD, whereas reciprocal relationships present bilateral technical IOAD. Analysis of a deviant case, however, suggests that the impact of power is weakened by the presence of behavioral IOAD.

A longitudinal rather than the cross‐sectional research design used might shed additional light on the phenomenon. Nonetheless, the relationship age of the six cases varies from three to 50 years providing data related to different stages of partnering.

The paper fosters practitioners' attention for behavioral aspects of supply chain partnering in order to understand actual successes and failures.

The paper shows that social capital theory contributes to one's understanding of IOAD.