'No one in the driver's seat' : an agent-based modelling approach to decentralised behaviour in supply chain co-ordination

As decentralised supply chain networks become the norm and vertically integrated firms the exception, there is a need to better understand decentralised co-ordination in such supply chains. However, contemporary research in supply chain management proceeds under the assumption that there is always a dominant actor in the supply chain network who is ‘in the driver's seat’. This article describes a study that investigates situations in which effective industrial supply chain co-ordination is achieved by multiple, independent actors where ‘no-one is in the driver's seat’. It introduces a formal modelling method to investigate such issues, called agent-based modelling. In this, we build on the notion of complex adaptive systems. The article shows the application of this method in three experiments with an simple supply chain model in one specific agent-based simulation environment. Exploratory findings are discussed and promising areas for further research are indicated