Supply chains and the enterprise

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to introduce a special issue on supply chains and the enterprise. Design/methodology/approach - Introductory review and brief description of research papers in this issue. Findings - To demonstrate the growing complexity and the multiple factors involved in structuring the enterprise effectively, references a paper by Iyer and Gottlieb that suggests an approach to enterprise architecture design. This integrates the internal and external environment, thus being highly relevant to supply chain issues. Research limitations/implications - Implies that the broad research framework for enterprise architecture is relevant to the study of supply chain issues, but leaves the reader to discover whether this is the case by perusing the research papers in this issue. Practical implications - Links enterprise architecture to supply chain issues of importance to industry. Originality/value - Provides a descriptive framework for linking papers in the issue to general supply chain issues.