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Supply chain in the C-suite: the effect of chief supply chain officers on incidence of product recalls

Maximilian Körber (School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands)
Diogo Cotta (School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands)

Supply Chain Management

ISSN: 1359-8546

Article publication date: 1 February 2021

Issue publication date: 3 May 2021

1378

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the extent to which the presence of chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) in top management teams (TMTs) helps firms to reduce the incidence of product recalls.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors identified all recalls for the period 2010–2017 issued by publicly held firms regulated by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. These data were subsequently combined with information on TMT composition from BoardEx and financial performance data from Compustat to create a unique data set.

Findings

The study identified a significant and negative association between CSCO presence and incidence of product recalls. The evidence also supports the conjecture that this association is stronger in larger firms, indicating that CSCOs are especially effective when operating within more complex supply chains.

Practical implications

The findings provide important insights into quality management in contemporary supply chains and indicate that assigning specific responsibility for supply chain management to a TMT member improves product reliability.

Originality/value

These findings contribute to the growing literature on the underlying causes of a product recall by identifying corporate governance antecedents of external quality failures of this kind.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Robert Suurmond, Niels Holtrop and Ming Li for their valuable comments on previous versions of this article. The authors would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their support through the review process. The two authors contributed equally and the order of authorship is the result of a coin toss.

Citation

Körber, M. and Cotta, D. (2021), "Supply chain in the C-suite: the effect of chief supply chain officers on incidence of product recalls", Supply Chain Management, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 495-513. https://doi.org/10.1108/SCM-03-2020-0112

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited

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