Cooper et al, 1997). In this light, companies are increasingly looking for competitive success not
only through the integration of internal business processes and strategic alignment of internal
functions, but also through the integration and alignment of inter-company processes.
A large number of contributions to the OM literature are now focused on how companies should
integrate their activities with customers and suppliers, and how
supply chain management practices should be aligned with the company strategy. However, companies
are still putting a lot of effort into improving their internal operations by adopting advanced
manufacturing practices. While these practices and their relationship with performance have been
widely studied in the past (for a recent review see, e.g. Dangayach and Deshmukh, 2001) the
relationship between supply chain integration and manufacturing improvement programmes has been
rather neglected so far. The identification of joint patterns of manufacturing and supply chain
strategies would allow a better understanding of the mutual implications of the two. This paper
aims to explore this issue on an empirical basis using a sample of 297
European manufacturing companies.