Putting supply chain learning into practice

As firms struggle to cope with an increasingly turbulent and uncertain economic environment there is widespread recognition of the importance of organisational learning. One option is to look at the potential of shared learning between firms, where common interests and interdependence provide motivation for experience sharing and other forms of synergy in learning. A particular version of inter-firm learning is the use of supply chains as a mechanism for upgrading and transferring appropriate practice and this article reports on exploratory research on this theme. It draws on a literature survey and a detailed study of six UK supply chains at various stages of implementing supply chain learning.