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Over the past two decades, technological advances have spurred companies to design collaborative processes. Yet most such efforts are difficult to implement, with only a few resulting in sustained competitive advantages. The purpose of this paper is to leverage the tenets of socio-technical theory to examine how collaborative process design may lead to improved collaborative performance.

The authors employ a multi-method – survey and interview – approach to examine the roles of technical and social initiatives in mitigating resistors to collaborative performance, and identify both the short-term appeals of technology investments and long-term social resistors that inhibit additional performance gains.

While initial investments in information technology yield alluring gains, performance benefits diminish as social resistors create limiting conditions. The dynamic capability for firms to recognize and respond to the dual and integrative nature of technical and social systems is required for firms to overcome powerful limiting conditions and change resistors through collaborative process design in order to cultivate new value-creation processes.

This study is the first in the discipline to utilize socio-technical systems theory to examine an issue in supply chain process redesign. The multi-method approach elaborates the difficulty inherent in cultivating new value-creation processes. The results collectively illustrate a need for recognizing the influence of both the reinforcing and limiting processes. Whereas, technical initiatives enable new capabilities, social initiatives remove fear, create vision, and inculcate skills, enabling technology adoption and process change.

Despite over 30 years of focus on supply chain collaboration, companies continue to struggle to achieve collaborative advantage. To better understand why some companies are able to collaborate for competitive advantage and others can't, the authors explore how managerial commitment enables collaborative capabilities.

The authors employed a longitudinal inductive study, interviewing companies with reputations for intense supply chain collaboration at four different times over 20 years.

The authors identified managerial commitment as a super-ordinate enabler. They describe the dynamics of commitment development and explore three types of commitment: instrumental, normative and transformative. The authors document key antecedents and outcomes of each type of commitment.

Theory regarding the antecedents to commitment to collaborative capability is underdeveloped. The authors elaborate these antecedents and the dynamics that enable or undermine the commitment necessary to build effective collaboration capabilities.

The authors provide insight (i.e. a practical and actionable roadmap) into the process companies use to cultivate commitment to collaboration and value co-creation.

Collaboration is critical to value co-creation, including effective supply chain risk mitigation and lasting sustainability efforts. The authors elaborate a theory of commitment dynamics that explains why most companies never go beyond basic levels of collaboration. At the same time, the authors provide a roadmap for deep, transformative collaboration.

Trust has long been viewed as a potential governance mechanism. However, recent research discloses substantive incongruities in trust conceptualization and operationalization – especially in the supply chain buyer/supplier context. The purpose of this paper is to develop an empirically grounded conceptualization of trust and to explore the trust-construction process.

The authors used the communications rationality approach to elaborate a three-stage qualitative study of supply chain trust. The authors first monologically examine trust by interviewing managers from over 50 companies (as described). The list of trust behaviors are then dialogically refined through 11 focus studies comprised of over 250 managers into different trust dimensions (as agreed upon). Finally, the authors used two in-depth, dyadic case studies to examine the dynamic trust construction process (as witnessed).

The authors find divergence in the way academics define trust and the way companies operationalize trust. Missing in action is the notion of benevolence. In the supply chain setting, managers describe trust as consisting of credibility and relationship commitment. Companies use an iterative approach to signal trustworthiness. However, ambiguity increases the costs and decreases the effectiveness of proactive trust construction as a form of supply chain governance.

The authors specify and evaluate novel constructs used to signal trustworthiness and document why and how companies struggle to use the signaling process efficiently and effectively. For some, this is an issue of managerial commitment. For others, this represents a lack of understanding of trustworthiness signals and the trust-construction process. Ultimately, the authors develop a more robust conceptualization of inter-organizational trust and present a roadmap for proactive trust construction.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how service perceptions influence customer views of the authenticity of corporate sustainability claims. The goal of this paper is to help supply chain decision-makers better understand boundary conditions in order to design more enduring and impactful sustainability programs.

The authors employ behavioral experiments, subjecting two theoretically derived hypotheses to verification across five diverse industries and two distinct sustainability vignettes.

Customer service perceptions emerge as a significant boundary condition to the perceived authenticity of sustainability efforts. Subjects attributed significantly higher authenticity toward sustainability efforts in above average vs below average service quality contexts. Further, respondents attributed deceptive motivations to sustainability efforts at companies with below average service.

The authors confirm the underlying tenet of social judgment theory, which suggests that a priori perceptions create a zone of acceptability or rejection. Ultimately, investing in sustainability can lead to counterproductive cynicism.

The authors infer that customers’ willingness to give companies credit for sustainability initiatives extends beyond service issues to any practice that influences a priori perceptions. Supply chain managers must rethink their role in designing both customer service and sustainability systems to achieve positive returns from sustainability investments.

The authors challenge the assumption that customers universally positively view sustainability efforts. If customers hold a priori negative service perceptions, otherwise well-designed sustainability programs may invoke cynical reactions. Thus, sustainability programs may not inoculate firm reputations from adverse incidents. Given they touch both service and sustainability systems, supply chain managers are positioned to holistically influence their design for competitive advantage.

Complexity has been called the 21st-century supply chain (SC) challenge. Most SC managers view it as a necessary evil, ever-present, costly and tough to manage, and few prioritize it. Still, anecdotes suggest some leverage it to drive operational excellence. This study aims to explore how they do it, delving into the development of a complexity management capability, under what circumstances it emerges and its effect on competitiveness.

To better understand why, and how, companies develop (or not) a distinctive SC complexity management capability, this study employed an inductive study of 10 leading European companies, each operating a complex SC.

Although SC complexity raises costs, increases disruptions and makes decision-making difficult, few companies have made complexity management a priority. Among those, most focus on reducing or absorbing complexity to improve operational excellence. A few invest to develop a distinctive SC complexity management capability. They manage complexity for market success. The interaction among competitive pressures, managerial attitudes and investments delineate a dynamic capability development process.

Despite extensive research on complexity drivers, the tools used to manage SC complexity and the impact of SC complexity on performance, the interplay among factors that promote, or hinder, the development of an SC complexity capability continues to be poorly understood. By mapping the complexity capability development process, this study explicates a more nuanced approach to managing SC complexity that can yield a competitive edge.

SC complexity prevails because the dynamic, iterative complexity capability development process is overlooked. Managers can use the complexity capability roadmap to assess the cost/benefits of pursuing a distinctive complexity management capability more accurately.

This study demystifies the development of a complexity management capability, showing how some companies develop the capability to distinguish between value-added and value-dissipating complexity and thus become empowered to leverage SC complexity for competitive advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a holistic paradigmatic lens through which the supply chain collaboration phenomena – including collaborative inventory management – can be understood and explained.

As theory‐building research, the paper explores the environmental conditions and managerial processes that promote or hinder supply chain collaboration from a variety of theoretical lenses including contingency theory, the resource‐based view of the firm, the relational view of the firm, force field analysis, constituency based theory, social dilemma theory, and resource‐advantage theory.

To demonstrate how an integrated theoretical framework can help us understand the dynamics of supply chain collaboration, the paper uses the framework to explicate the evolution and state of collaborative inventory management.

The framework can accurately depict and explain highly publicized collaborative failures and successes. It is also possible to draw from the model's core propositions to design prescriptive remedies for the challenges managers encounter as they seek to build collaborative inventory management capabilities.

Supply chain collaboration is a complex and dynamic phenomenon; however, existing management theories only describe locally observed phenomenon. As a result, it is a struggle to both explain existing “collaborative” behavior and provide prescriptions for leveraging collaboration to achieve differential supply chain performance. This holistic, integrative model delineates the path to collaborative success by exploring the connections among motivations, goals, mechanisms, resistors, and learning loops.

Given the tension between the rationale for and resistance to supply chain integration (SCI), the authors aim to provide an update on the rhetoric and reality of SCI and extend theory related to adoption and efficacy of integration strategies.

The authors employ a multi‐method – survey and interview – replication approach to gauge the extent to which companies are increasing their engagement in SCI and assess integration's influence on firm performance.

Despite managerial awareness of SCI's potential benefits, levels of integration have remained relatively unchanged over time. Integration is positively related to operational performance and firm performance – primarily through its influence on productivity and customer service. The interviews indicate some firms are beginning to manage value co‐creation initiatives across multiple tiers of the supply chain. They also reveal awareness of integration's competitive potential is insufficient to mobilize resources and mitigate resistance to collaboration. Commitment is a superordinate enabler.

Multi‐method, replication research is rare, but it is necessary to understand collaboration dynamics. The authors' approach enables them to delve into the paradox between the positive performance impact and the lack of progress toward greater integration. Theoretically, they link commitment and capability. Managerially, they propose a maturity framework that managers can use to benchmark their own SCI initiative.

The purpose of this study is to elaborate theory regarding the reasons why collaboration strategies fail. The relational view posits that supply chain integration can be a source of competitive advantage. Few firms, however, successfully co-create value to attain supernormal relational rents.

This study uses a quasi-longitudinal, multi-case interview methodology to explore the reasons why collaboration strategies fail to deliver intended results. The authors interviewed managers at 49 companies in Period 1 and managers at 57 companies in Period 2. In all, 15 companies participated in both rounds of interviews.

This study builds and describes a taxonomy of relational resistors. The authors then explore how sociological and structural resistors reinforce each other to undermine collaborative behavior. Specifically, the interplay among resistors: obscures the true sources of resistance; exacerbates a sense of vulnerability to non-collaborative behavior that reduces the willingness to invest in relational architecture; and inhibits the development of essential relational skills and organizational routines.

This research identifies and describes the behaviors and processes that impede successful supply chain alliances. By delving into the interplay among relational resistors, the research explains the detail and nuance of inter-firm rivalry and supply chain complexity. Ultimately, it is the re-enforcing nature of various resistors that make it so difficult for firms to realize relational rents.

Competitive dynamics are placing greater emphasis on customer experience, making the management of the last 100 meters of the supply chain critical to differential performance. Traditionally, supply chain design has emphasized two processes: new product development and order fulfillment. Today, a third process must be designed and managed for competitive advantage. That is, the authors need to learn to design service value systems to enhance the customer experience and promote loyalty and lifetime streams of profit. This research informs the enduring challenge that underlies the delivery of high levels of customer satisfaction by enriching theory related to the design and provision of distinctive customer experience. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The critical incident technique (CIT), an inductive method, is employed to explore two core dimensions of expectancy theory and to identify the phenomenological and underlying systems design factors that bring about both positive and negative customer experiences.

The analysis shows that few companies use customer experience as a competitive lever. Customer service failures persist from a lack of managerial commitment and poor service-delivery process design. A holistic view of customer service that emphasizes policy, people, performance measurement, and processes emerges.

Identifying and describing the customer-experience system as a third fundamental supply chain process is an important contribution. By linking a CIT approach with cause-and-effect analysis, the authors go beyond the frequently analyzed cognitive phenomenology to identify vital systems design issues. By enhancing the customer experience at the end of the supply chain, greater advantage for all participants in the chain emerges.

The purpose of this paper is to address how companies mitigate existing forces to achieve the collaboration enabled supply chain (SC).

Seven key theories were used to provide insight into the theoretical framework for the creation of the collaboration‐enabled SC: contingency theory, the resource‐based view of the firm, the relational view of the firm, force field theory, constituency‐based theory, social dilemma theory, and resource‐advantage theory. An exploratory cross‐sectional survey was conducted at two different points in time – a six‐year period in between. The survey targeted three different functional areas – logistics, manufacturing, and sourcing – to compare and contrast functional perceptions of barriers and bridges to collaboration.

Companies are beginning to pursue greater collaboration, however, managers are often stymied in their pursuit of collaborative business models. The data suggest that the challenge is not the existence of a single barrier to collaboration, but one of accumulation. As the many resistors reinforce each other, the change needed to increase collaboration is avoided. To overcome these challenges, the findings suggest that a comprehensive and carefully executed collaboration strategy is needed to help a company profitably deliver high levels of customer satisfaction. Those companies that succeed achieve substantial, documentable benefits.

The findings reveal that developing a collaboration‐enabled business model is very difficult. Therefore, managers must carefully evaluate their companies' motivation and readiness to pursue a collaboration‐enabled SC, consider whether they can generate momentum for sustained change, and ascertain whether they can persist when benefits are slow to emerge.

This study is both longitudinal and cross‐functional and leads to a better understanding of how to manage, change, and create a collaborative decision‐making environment.