Value Network and Conscious Competition: A Case Study of Sugar Industry in India

Abstract

In an increasingly competitive business conditions, companies need to leverage competencies of an entire business network in order to achieve competitive advantage. Supply chain network envisages how a focal firm could build a network of partners in fulfilling a customer demand. In this process, a focal firm leads and ensures fair play of role, responsibility, reward and risk sharing among all its partners. Bringing in business ecosystem configuration, one can relate how structural features of an industry and regulatory can impact the performance of the industry. In modern new generation, technology led and market oriented businesses, market forces help to align entities and focal firm commands hierarchy in both upstream and downstream towards common goal. If any of the partners find, the goal or reward and risk being unduly burdened, partner would opt out. However, there are certain traditional industries which have survived long under regulatory conditions because of its weak structuring, have focal firms burdened with conflicting objectives of partners. One such industry is that of manufacture of sugar in India which is being deregulated. However, current set of deregulatory measures are more focused on downstream linkages rather than upstream linkages. In this paper, author reviews different works connected with supply network and relates to Indian sugar industry in the context of structure and regulatory framework.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n1p479