Sustainable Solutions for SCM

4 COOPERATION MANAGEMENT TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS The topic of managing cooperation activities is currently a hot topic. At present, cooperation represents for a company an important tool for increasing its competitiveness. Companies no longer develop their cooperation activities based on “impressions” or “gut feelings”, but rather based on knowledge derived from the opinions of their customers, employees and partners. They collect the necessary information, support creation of knowledge, explore market opportunities and make decisions about the need to cooperate. Companies aim to fully utilise their cooperation potential. In order to be successful, it is needed to effectively manage these activities and to dynamically react to the ongoing market development. Here we can use the proposed matrix of cooperation organisational structures, which will ensure efficient organisation of the emerging market opportunities using the created cooperation. The world along with today’s market is characterised by globalisation. Goods, services, capital and knowledge resources are produced all over the world and can be used globally. Competition is more intense than ever, and cooperation could be a means how to compete even more efficiently. Alliances, joint ventures, associations, clusters, networks, consortia and various types of cooperation within industry, science and research are nowadays extremely successful because of their efficiency. They allow access to goods and services which are for a single organisation alone quite unattainable. It is also a means of competition because it increases the participation of a subject’s competitiveness. These effects are currently taking place at global and regional levels. They are available and utilisable at all levels and in all aspects of the market. 4.1 Theoretical background There is an ongoing scientific discussion regarding the term cooperationmanagement, its definition and the scope of its use. Several definitions of cooperation management can be found in the scientific literature. However, these definitions typically address only a subset of the whole task of cooperation management. High variability in interpretation of the term can be supported by the following examples. We can understand cooperation management as a way of managing and developing collaboration in a competitive environment [18]. Cooperation management represents a term for integrated management of company networks [34]. Cooperation management is also cooperative decision making within heterogeneous preferences. The need for a model of cooperation based on a defined group choice is very important [43]. Cooperation management is a complex decision making process, ongoing on three levels of the managerial pyramid, whose goal is to reach a suitable balance between company success within cooperation as a business unit and as a social institution [42]. Another point of view about cooperation management is that it concerns the effective use of resources within an instance of cooperation as it applies business organisation, focused on satisfying the needs of its members, according to the accepted cooperation principles [51], [52]. Cooperation management represents a basis for solving all managerial problems: it provides conditions for creating a system of cooperation based on effective use of resources and technologies [57]. We can

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