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Top1. Introduction
Information sharing, i.e. the availability of information from other inter-organizational partners has been of interest for more than half a century (Forrester, 1958; Lee, So, & Tang, 2000; Montoya-Torres & Ortiz-Vargas, 2014). It is considered to be one of the key mechanisms for coordination across organizations and has shown to enable more accurate forecasts, lower inventory levels, and reduction of bullwhip effect (Mason-Jones & Towill, 1997; Trapero, Kourentzes, & Fildes, 2012; Zhao & Xie, 2002). However, to fully reap the potential of the shared information, recent studies in the field of supply chain management suggest not only to make information available, but placing a strong focus on how the shared information is and could be utilized at the receiving company (Baihaqi & Sohal, 2013; Jonsson & Mattsson, 2013; Myrelid, 2015).
It has been acknowledged that the utilization and the value of shared information is context specific (El Kadiri et al., 2016; Shaik & Abdul-Kader, 2013). We have chosen food supply chains as the context for this study for two main reasons. Firstly, the characteristics of food supply chains and the products are known to impose special logistical requirements (limited ability to use of buffer inventories, traceability requirements, etc.) (Fredriksson & Liljestrand, 2015; Trienekens & van Der Vorst, 2006). Secondly, due to detailed and fine meshed traceability requirements, starting from the primary producer to the final store, the supply chain as a whole encompasses a vast amount of information (Folinas & Manikas, 2010; Trienekens & van Der Vorst, 2006). Thus, on one hand, food supply chains call for special logistical activities, and on the other hand, the actors in the chain capture valuable information that may be utilized to a higher extent for those logistical activities.
Utilization of shared information is poorly defined in the existing literature (Jonsson & Myrelid, 2016; Kim & Narasimhan, 2002; Myrelid, 2015). Insights from one of the largest wholesalers and retailer in Norway confirms the necessity and potential benefit of utilize the shared information across the whole supply chain to improve coordination further. On one hand, limited transparency or access to information implies that decisions are taken without considering other actors in the chain. On the other hand, the vast amount of information that is captured due to traceability requirements are mostly used for reporting and safety purpose as other areas of usage has not been systematically identified. These challenges have also been stressed in the literature by (Endsley, 2016, pp. 3-4) stating that: “In the face of this torrent of information, many of us feel less informed than ever before. This is because there is a huge gap between the tons of data being produced and disseminated, and our ability to find the bits that are needed and process them together with the other bits to arrive at the actual needed information. That is, it seems to be even harder to find out what we really want or need to know”.