Overview of coordination contracts within forward and reverse supply chains

Contracts are comprehensive coordination mechanisms used in both theory and practice to coordinate various supply chain structures. By focusing on the coordination by contracts of the forward and reverse supply chains, the intention of this paper is to (1) present an overview of contracting literature and (2) suggest a classification of coordination contracts and contracting literature in the form of classification schemes. The criteria used for contract classification are transfer payment contractual incentives and inventory risk sharing. The classification schemes are based on the level of detail used in designing the coordination models. The paper gives a complete overview of the literature that addresses coordination by contracts, structures and classifies the existing work, and draws a parallel between the research conducted on the forward supply chain and the research on the reverse supply chain. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.