The other day, while reviewing a chapter for inclusion (or not) in the upcoming book Managing Risk in Virtual Enterprise Networks, in the chapter author’s reference list, I came across a very interesting article on Structural embeddedness and supplier management : A network perspective, and a term I had never heard about before: structural embeddedness. Now, structure refers to the characteristics of a supply network, such as how many suppliers or customers a company works with and how tightly or loosely coupled its relationships are, while embeddedness refers to the state of dependence of a company on its suppliers and customers in a particular supply network structure. Why is this important? Because we need to consider how a supplier is embedded in its own networks if we are to truly gauge its performance.

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