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Top1. Introduction
It is widely acknowledged in the literature that firms do not develop their competitiveness as a single entity but do so within a chain by developing business relationships with their customers and suppliers (Min et al., 2005; Wang and Chan, 2009). Competition will not be between companies but rather between supply chains (Lambert and Cooper, 2000).
This shows the interest that the literature has given these recent years to the study of inter-organizational relations between firms (Cousins, 2005; Flynn et al., 2010; Zhao et al., 2011; Barratt and Barratt, 2012; Liu, 2009; Williams et al., 2013; Le Dinh and Thi, 2012; Ryan et al., 2014).). In addition, inter-organizational relationships include different levels of interaction between firms within the same supply chain. As part of this relationship, firms exchange and share information upstream and downstream of the chain in order to be more performants (Towers and Burnes, 2008). The logistic integration is also a key success factor of some specific business relationship like franchising (Thierry et al., 2018).
The integration of the supply chain leads to a synchronization of the flows as well as information sharing and collaboration between the company and its partners in the decision-making process. Consequently, logistics costs decrease, the products’ quality increases and the delivery time shortens, leading, thus, to an improvement of the operational and financial performance of the company.
Furthermore, to be more competitive, the supply chains must be more integrated. Through a dyadic perspective (Mentzer, 2001), the supply chain of the focal firm must be more integrated both internally and externally (with their suppliers and customers). This needs more integration of information system, more collaboration and more information sharing.
Several empirical researches had shown that there is a significant and positive relationship between the level of integration of the supply chain and the firm performance (Rosenzweig and al., 2003; Menzer, 2004; Gimenez and Ventura, 2005; Sahin and Robinson, 2005; Fabbe-Costes et al., 2008; Huo et al., 2012; Alfalla-Luquea et al., 2013; Yu et al. 2013; Irani et al., 2014; Veera et al., 2014; Huo et al., 2015; Zhao et al., 2015).