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This paper outlines the theoretical concept of a study currently under way in China. Its main idea is to explore the sustainability of centralized inter-organizational systems for supply chain management as proposed by Markus et al. ([8]). The study draws on institutional theory in both its older and its newer versions. This theory is used for selecting the method of data collectionas well as for deriving hypotheses and defining our notion of sustainability. To facilitate the development of hypotheses, a simple theory-based scheme for classifying industrial institutional structures is developed which, however, needs further refinement. It is envisaged that the study will be extended in a second stage to replicate findings in other countries in order to assess the influence of government policy and of institutional structures residing on the level of a whole country.