Conclusions
South East Europe has the potential of becoming a major node in global supply chain networks, since its geographical position allows it tho be the natural bridge between the advanced Western Europe and the emerging markets of the East. This study embarked on exploring the state of LSCM and the use of information system to support LSCM in South East Europe, in order to provide insights to practitioners and policy makers both within and outside the region. Instead of focusing on the differences between countries involved, the study took an original macro-perspective considering the region as an entity.
the findings of this study are valuable both for academics and practitioners. Nevertheless they should be considered with caution because of few inherent limitations. Although the number of companies included was considered acceptable for an initial investigation of LSCM in the region, it has limited generalisation power. In order to acquire more concrete evidence on South East Europe, a larger sample that would potentially include all countries in the region, would be necessary. Furthermore, the nature of the study indicated a certain approach which restricted depth of analysis in favour of breadth. This is because the study tried to touch upon various significant issues in LSCM and information systems at the same time in order to provide a first overview of South East Europe. Thus, potentially important variables such as frequency in system usage, and company size and type were not incorporated into the analysis. Nevertheless, further studies could be based on these results focusing on more specific issues and intriguing topics such as customer orientation, strategic thinking, and systems integration, as well as conduction specific inter-country comparisons