The first paper, �The Effect of Supply Chain Integration on Supply Chain Performance�, by Justice Odei Som, Collins Cobblah and Hod Anyigba, investigates the impact of supply chain integration on supply chain performance. The study considers three important components of supply chain integration, viz., information integration, operational integration and relational integration, and examines their impact on the overall performance of the supply chain. The data was collected from selected supply chain and information system specialists using a questionnaire containing the constructs of interest. The findings reveal that information integration and operational integration have a positive effect on supply chain performance while relational integration has a negative effect on supply chain performance. The results suggest that within the Ghanaian context, managers should invest more in information and operational integration in order to achieve positive outcomes in their supply chain, while relational integration should be done with more caution because of its underlying elements of trust and long-term commitments.

The second paper, �The Relationship Between Supply Chain Strategy and Supply Chain Performance: An Empirical Investigation Using Structural Equation Modeling�, by Amit Chandak, Neeraj Kumar and A Dalpati, highlights the importance of supply chain management practices in enhancing the overall performance of any organization. According to the authors, supply chain management has become one of the fastest growing and key areas in management, as a result of which it has successfully grabbed the attention of top management in respective organizations. Through implementation of appropriate supply chain management practices, firms achieve strategic competitiveness, thereby taking their performance to the next level. This paper examines the relationship between Supply Chain Strategy (SCS) and Supply Chain Performance (SCP) for automobile industry in India, especially small and medium enterprises. The association is examined through statistical methods such as Pearson correlation coefficient and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results reveal that SCS has a significant correlation with SCP. Especially, SCS parameters such as innovative strategy, customer-oriented strategy and agile supply chain strategy have a high correlation with SCP [i.e., cost performance, logistic performance and quality performance]. The SEM results also show that SCS parameters appear to be of primary importance and exhibit the importance of SCP. The result underlines the importance of SCP to the automotive industry in India.

The third paper, �Organizational Benefits of an Effective Vendor Management Strategy�, by Shannon Cleary and Carolan McLarney, highlights the importance of an effective Vendor Management Strategy (VMS) for an organization. Corporations like Walmart and Cisco have achieved better performance through effective VMS. Specifically, they have focused on excellence in performance management, inventory management and corporate sustainability. According to the authors, an effective VMS supports a diversified vendor relationship and consistent processes, reduces costs and provides an opportunity to negotiate better terms based on volumes. This paper discusses the key components of vendor management framework suggested by Gartner report (2014) which contributes to the effective management of vendor relationship. Also, looking beyond an effective VMS, the paper focuses on how a business can deliver a differentiated, innovative, and agile VMS through the support of outsourcing data to cloud computing vendors.