Views on inter-enterprise relationships

The paper gives an overview of major scientific approaches to inter-enterprise relationships. A distinction is made between approaches that focus on business process integration (Supply Chain Management, Costing approaches), approaches that focus on organizational collaboration (Transaction Cost Theory, Agency Theory), and approaches that focus on the business environment (Strategic Management, Network Theory, Resource Dependency Theory). Although these approaches are different with regard to their perspectives on collaboration, variables and methods, the paper shows that they are complementary tools in the analysis and design of inter-enterprise relationships.