Emerald Award for Van der Vaart and Van Donk

Dr. Taco van der Vaart and dr. Dirk Pieter van Donk of the Faculty of Management and Organization have won the Emerald Award for Highly Commended papers. They have been awarded the prize for an article that they published in the International Journal of Operations & Production Management. The award is sponsored by Emerald, publisher of several international academic journals. Van der Vaart and Donk will be presented with the award in April.

The title of the paper in question is: Buyer-focused operations as a supply chain strategy: identifying the influence of business characteristics.

The paper
To serve their key buyers optimally, some suppliers choose to single out resources for these individual buyers and aim at a high level of supply chain alignment. Van der Vaart and Van Donk identified what business characteristics make suppliers choose buyer-focused operations as a supply chain strategy in their relationships with key buyers.

They collected a broad range of qualitative and quantitative data during interviews and plant visits.

Some of the suppliers choose buyer-focused operations to fulfil the buyer's requirements in terms of flexibility. Another reason is to perform additional assembly operations. Suppliers rarely consider buyer-focus of core production technology in relationships with buyers for which cost and speed are the main order-winners.

The results of the paper help managers in choosing between different forms of buyer-focus, based on the specific characteristics of a supply chain link. It shows that striving for close cooperation in a supply relationship needs to be carefully considered and depends on the business characteristics.

Emerald
Emerald Group Publishing (www.emeraldinsight.com) is the instigator of the Emerald Literati Network for the affiliated journals. The editorial team of each journal proposes highly commended papers from the most recent issues.

For further information:
-Dr. Taco van der Vaart, tel. (050)363 70 60, e-mail j.t.van.der.vaart rug.nl
-Dr Dirk Pieter van Donk, tel. (050)363 73 45, e-mail d.p.van.donk rug.nl