Strategic adaptivity in global supply chains-Competitive advantage by autonomous cooperation

Global supply chains (GSCs) are confronted with the phenomenon of hyper-competition. For this reason there seems to be an increasing necessity for GSCs to build up competitive advantage in order to survive. Strategic flexibility is assumed to have positive effects on generating required competitive advantage by replicating and reconfiguring competences to manage GSCs, while keeping GSCs stable. Autonomous cooperation and control (ACC) as a management approach may contribute to achieving flexibility in GSCs. Therefore, this paper intends to discuss possible contributions of ACC to creating flexibility and in turn to generating competitive advantage in GSCs.