Author(s): Thi Minh Hang Le, Thuy Hang Nguyen, Nguyen Le Dinh Quy
The basis of global competition has changed. Nowadays, it no longer is the race between companies versus other companies, but rather the competition between supply chains, which are simply defined as processes involving the constant flow of information, materials and finance across multiple functional areas both within and between chain members. To have an efficient supply chain, collaboration is considered as a prerequisite, which has been supported by many scholars through their researches that it can bring extensive benefits and advantages to SC partners. From our reference base, most of the previous findings focused on measuring the collaboration situation in the whole chain, from upstream to downstream, however, we suppose that the collaboration nature differs among upstream and downstream region. In addition to that, as mentioned by Monczka, many features that make firm’s way into final products originate with suppliers. The supply base is an important part of the SC because supplier capabilities can help differentiate a producer’s final good or service. Nevertheless, in Vietnam, both the number of paper and the manager’s knowledge about this sector still are limited. Due to this acknowledgement, in the research processing, we aim to explore the collaboration state in the upstream part of the local small and medium entrepreneurs (SMEs)’ supply chain, which in turn might help firms realize their present condition and quickly make some improvements.