The research topic of power relationships has been receiving increasingly more attention lately. However, only a few scientific works have studied power in the context of supply chain management. In this regard, intriguing research questions arise of how to distinguish among and deal with negative and positive effects of power in order to avoid problems and use power as an effective tool for supply chain management appear to be an important one. An important challenge, therefore, is to find out what role power plays in supply chain networks and how it affects supply chain management with specific attention to coordination and cooperation, and whether power can be utilized as a tool to promote the overall supply chain effectiveness. Therefore, the aim of our work is to investigate the role of power in supply chain networks in order to work out a strategy that enables supply chain managers to select an effective mix of power mechanisms.