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Management approaches, such as supply chain management addressing cooperation among firms emphasize communication among people from different companies. The objective of this research was to investigate the impact of individual and contextual factors on the external communication behavior of purchasing managers in Germany.

Based on the literature, oral and written communication capabilities, purchasers' attitudes and the internal communication climate were identified as potential impact factors. A structural equation model containing 11 constructs was designed. Six hundred and seventeen responses were available for statistical analysis.

Summing up the results, oral communication capability and purchasers' attitudes toward individual communication with the suppliers play important roles in explaining external communication behavior of purchasers. Regarding indirect effects, there are strong total effects of the oral communication capability and the attitudes on the supplier management success as well as satisfaction.

Several measures were operationalized using two‐item or three‐item scales. Future research should focus on the development of more comprehensive scales.

Various conclusions from the results were drawn. Particularly, there are important managerial impacts on supply management and human resource management.

The paper provides the first scientific insight into the relationships between oral communication capability, attitudes toward communication, communication behavior and managerial performance in the field of supply management.

An efficient supplier management is of central importance for successful supply chain management. It begins with the identification of potential suppliers and leads to the controlling of the supplier‐buyer‐connection. This paper aims to design a new supplier‐rating system that fits the practical needs of supplier rating and supports many other steps of the suppliers management process.

An empirical study on supplier rating among 193 industrial companies revealed that the existing methods for supplier rating do not satisfy the needs in practice. This paper describes a multivariate analysis tool for managing a pool of engaged or future suppliers. A constructed ideal supplier serves as a reference to compare all suppliers by means of multivariate analysis methods. A case study illustrates the application of the tool.

The empirical study found out new needs for supplier‐rating methods such as graphical representation of the suppliers. The designed supplier‐rating system uses principal component analysis to create a classification and ranking of the potential suppliers by means of ellipsoid clusters. If this new supplier‐rating system is applied repeatedly, a dynamic observation of the suppliers is guaranteed, always corresponding to real market conditions.

The new system has to run computerized and can be used for pre‐qualification, selection and controlling of suppliers. It is easy to handle and practicable without using manual criteria‐weighting.

To examine the conditions under which the proposed benefits of collaboration between a firm and its suppliers will occur.

This paper examines buyer‐supplier relationships from the point of view of the buying firm. The paper is based on a Swiss sample of OEM‐supplier relationships. The research question is empirically tested employing a sample of 135 Swiss buyer‐supplier relationships and using structured equation modelling as well as multi‐group comparison to test for quasi‐moderation effects. In this paper it is investigated under which condition collaboration with key suppliers is beneficial for buyers. By linking collaboration with key performance measures and contrasting its effects with relational constructs like trust and dependence it is hoped to add to the growing literature on inter‐organizational relationships in supply chain contexts.

The results demonstrate that supplier collaboration has a positive effect on buyer performance both in terms of innovative capability and financial results. As expected, trust and dependence play an important role in supplier relationships.

This research is based on a single country (Switzerland) multi‐industry study. Generalizability to other industries or countries may be limited.

Supplier relationships need governance modes that balance control and relational elements. Relationship controlling is an important element in building successful supplier relationships. In order to be able to reap the benefits of collaboration for the entire company, the purchasing department needs incentives that support relationship building. Managers leading a purchasing department can learn what structural elements and processes are necessary to obtain optimal benefits from their supply base.

From a manager's viewpoint, this paper will provide additional insight into when and how collaboration can improve financial performance, enhance innovation, and reduce transaction costs..

A variant of Kohonen's algorithm for the self‐organizing map (SOM) is used to solve a continuous location‐routing problem that can be applied to identify potential sites for subsequent selection by a discrete finite set model. The paper aims to show how the algorithm may be customized to fit the problem structure in a way that allows aspects of location and routing to be integrated into the solution procedure.

A set of test instances is used to compare the solutions of the neural network to those obtained by sequential approaches based on a savings procedure.

Compared to the results of the sequential approaches, the neural network yields good results.

Future work may cover the expansion of the neural approach to multi‐depot and multi‐stage problems. Additionally, application of procedures other than the savings procedure should be evaluated with respect to their potential for further enhancing the solution quality of the sequential approaches.

This paper shows that strategic location decisions in practical applications with long‐term customer relationships can be taken using simultaneously generated routing information on an operational level.

The paper provides a new variety of applications for SOM as well as high quality results for the specific type of problem considered.

Freight carriers operating in a spot-market environment are faced with uncertain future capacity demand, actual revenues, and properties of freight items. They require information about the expected future consumption of limited capacity to derive suitable request acceptance decisions. The purpose of this paper is to present a new idea to improve the handling of inaccurate information on the weight and volume of upcoming requests.

The authors start with the definition of a new mathematical optimization model as the backbone of a capacity control system. This model is embedded within a rolling-horizon decision-making process involving consecutively arriving requests. Computational simulation experiments are carried out to evaluate the applicability and efficiency of the proposed decision support system. The authors investigate how the new model contributes towards keeping the negative impacts of inadequate forecasts of the expected volume of future requests as low as possible.

In traditional application fields of capacity control (airline ticketing or hotel reservations) the physical extent of a request is always 1 (set/bed/room). In road-based freight transportation the variety of the physical extent of requests is much more complicated and complex. The major finding is that existing capacity control approaches are unable to meet the special requirements of road-haulage. Innovative capacity control features are necessary in order to cope with the higher request portfolio complexity.

This paper addresses the requirements of a capacity control system for road-based freight transportation. An innovative decision support system is evaluated. For the first time, the authors present a comprehensive quantitative simulation study dedicated to this complicated decision-making situation.

The coping of demand oscillation is an important challenge in dynamic transport planning. A reliable request fulfillment must be provided even if the number of incoming requests temporarily climbs over the expected demand and resource scarceness appears. The aim of this paper is to propose an innovative planning approach that enables a transportation fleet to maintain a sufficiently high percentage of timely‐fulfilled customer requests even in demand peak situations.

The effectiveness of the new approach is verified in computational simulation experiments. Quantifications for the system's responsiveness are proposed. Then, the quantified knowledge about the intermediate responsiveness is exploited to adjust the decision model representing the next schedule update task in a rolling horizon re‐planning.

The observed simulation results suggest the suitability of the proposed approach. An adjustment of the plan update model supports the maintenance of a high percentage of timely completed requests during and after the demand peak.

The generic approach presented and evaluated here motivates an adaptation to other more practical problem settings, in order to show its general applicability.

The proposed methodology contributes to the current demand for computational support for increasing the responsiveness of logistic systems.

The original contribution of this paper is the autonomous feedback‐controlled adjustment of decision preferences which enables a rolling horizon re‐planning framework to maintain a stable output performance even if the input oscillates significantly over time.

To provide empirical evidence and explanation of the phenomenon that providers of home delivery of groceries are still of minor importance in highly concentrated retail markets.

Based on a critical literature review three propositions were set up. A web‐based survey was conducted with two prospective consumer groups for home delivery providers: time‐starved consumers and consumers with internet affinity. A structural equation modeling analysis was applied in addition to uni‐ and bivariate analysis.

In contrast with some assumptions in the literature shopping in stores for groceries was not generally perceived to be an annoying activity. Respondents were aware of their own shopping logistics efforts in terms of spatial and temporal distance when shopping in stores but were unable to convert these efforts into costs. Any perceived inconvenience connected with shopping for groceries had no impact on respondents' willingness to pay for home delivery services or their future intentions to use such services.

The study only investigated two specific consumer groups within highly concentrated urban grocery retail markets. However, these groups may be considered typical of most western European countries and thus the study's findings are of importance to retailers.

The major findings suggest that in general home delivery service may not be considered a strategic competitive advantage in grocery retail markets. Other marketing issues such as pricing, assortment and store personnel still substantially affect a consumer's choice of retail formats. This leads to the conclusion that home delivery providers should either appeal to niche markets and/or offer additional differential criteria compared with traditional retail formats.

The paper argues for a different viewpoint for researchers investigating the topic of internet‐based distance retailing. Further, the reintegration of logistical tasks from consumers should not be considered detached from other format choice criteria.