Search results
1 – 10 of 147Jas Kalra, Michael Lewis and Jens K. Roehrich
This paper aims to investigate governance in service triads, specifically studying significant steering and connecting coordination failures, to reveal typically hidden…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate governance in service triads, specifically studying significant steering and connecting coordination failures, to reveal typically hidden characteristics and consequences.
Design/methodology/approach
This study focuses on coordination functions and activities between a buyer (a government department), a customer (a military service) and two service providers. Rich data on these normally confidential service ties are drawn from an official report into the causes of a fatal accident involving a UK reconnaissance aircraft and specifically from the evidence presented regarding the earlier development of its complex safety case. The authors also analysed a range of additional secondary data sources.
Findings
The authors examine the sources, drivers and manifestation of coordination failures. The authors uncover a series of coordination failures driven from the bridge position, revealing that while bounded rationality and opportunism influenced steering coordination failures, connecting coordination failures were associated with knowledge asymmetry, dyadic inertia and unethical practices.
Practical implications
Organisations and governments delivering complex projects and knowledge-intensive professional services should guard against outsourcing the “coordination” activity to a third party, thereby relinquishing the bridge position. Handing over the bridge position to an integrator would leave the client vulnerable to coordination dysfunctions such as bounded rationality, opportunism, knowledge asymmetry, dyadic inertia and unethical practices.
Originality/value
The study links the previously separate research streams of service triads and inter-organizational coordination. While extant research pays attention to mainly positive control functions, this study focuses on all three actors in two (failed) service triads – and highlights the impact of coordination activities and failures.
Details
Keywords
Elcio M. Tachizawa and Chee Yew Wong
The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive framework that synthesizes approaches and contingency variables to manage the sustainability of multi-tier supply chains…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive framework that synthesizes approaches and contingency variables to manage the sustainability of multi-tier supply chains and sub-suppliers.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a systematic literature review, the authors analyse 39 studies and relevant theories to develop a comprehensive framework that integrates research efforts so far.
Findings
The authors build a conceptual framework that incorporates four approaches to manage the sustainability of multi-tier supply chains. They also identify several contingency variables (e.g. power, dependency, distance, industry, knowledge resources) and their effect on the proposed approaches.
Research limitations/implications
Based on the framework, six research propositions that advance the theories on multi-tier supply chain management, allow lead firms to develop comprehensive sustainable supply chain strategies and set the ground for future research in the area were developed.
Originality/value
This study provides a novel framework for studying sustainability in multi-tier supply chains that goes beyond the single-tier perspective and incorporates the extended supply chain.
Details
Keywords
Daria Kovalevskaya, Elsebeth Holmen, Aristidis Kaloudis and Ann-Charlott Pedersen
This paper aims to develop the existing theoretical concept of a triad by informing it with the activity-resource-actor (ARA) model in a new empirical context of lean management…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to develop the existing theoretical concept of a triad by informing it with the activity-resource-actor (ARA) model in a new empirical context of lean management (LM).
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual paper draws on the industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) school of thought and the ARA model as theoretical lenses to inform research on triads in an LM context.
Findings
The authors find that closed buyer-supplier-supplier (BSS) and buyer-supplier-logistics service provider (BSL) triads, which we call “lean triads,” had a positive impact on LM. The authors display the drivers for closure – LM improvements (Table 2) and the properties of these “lean triads” (Figure 3).
Research limitations/implications
The paper focuses only on closed triads and is based on previous empirical studies.
Practical implications
The authors demonstrate to lean managers the drivers for connecting their partners in BSS and BSL triads and show the importance of developing relationships on three layers between all three actors in both triads to improve a firm’s lean performance.
Originality/value
The authors contribute to the discussion within the IMP school of thought on the value of triads by enriching the understanding of a triad concept with the ARA model, which compounds a concept of a multilayered triad in an LM context.
Details
Keywords
Andrea Patrucco, Christine Mary Harland, Davide Luzzini and Federico Frattini
Suppliers are essential partners in innovation projects, as they own resources, knowledge assets and capabilities that complement those of buying firms. In today’s competitive…
Abstract
Purpose
Suppliers are essential partners in innovation projects, as they own resources, knowledge assets and capabilities that complement those of buying firms. In today’s competitive environment, firms may choose to collaborate with suppliers beyond dyads, forming triadic or three-party relationships. Using the theoretical lens of the relational view (RV), this study aims to explore what type of triad configurations firms use to govern supplier relationships in collaborative innovation projects, how they choose to share resources and implications for project performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use interview data from buyers and suppliers in six case studies of firms involved in ten collaborative innovation projects. The four constructs of the RV are used to observe how firms govern triadic relationships, combine complementary resources, invest in relationship-specific assets and manage information and knowledge exchange with and between suppliers in innovation projects.
Findings
Four archetypes of triadic relationships in innovation projects – labeled Triangle, A-frame, D-Frame and Line – are presented and characterized in terms of their structural and relational features. The authors discuss how each triad archetype is applicable to different innovation projects according to specific project characteristics.
Originality/value
This study is pioneering in its empirical examination of triadic relationships in collaborative innovation projects. It provides a novel typology of four archetypes of triad from the perspective of collaborative relationships with suppliers. Through applying the RV, it advances understanding of how triadic relationships are governed, how they invest in relationship-specific assets, how they combine complementary resources and how they exchange knowledge and information in each type of triad appropriate to different innovation project settings. To date, much of the extant literature has focused on dyads.
Details
Keywords
Firms often struggle with opportunistic behavior from supply chain partners. Relying on Transaction Cost Economics and its extensions, this study developed a conceptual model…
Abstract
Purpose
Firms often struggle with opportunistic behavior from supply chain partners. Relying on Transaction Cost Economics and its extensions, this study developed a conceptual model theorizing the antecedence, consequences and conditional factors of opportunism within a buyer–supplier–supplier triadic relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employed a cross-sectional survey data collected from 200 U.S. firms. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS and AMOS, the two statistical software, for reliability, validity, confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modeling.
Findings
First, opportunism negatively influences operational performance and business performance, and such an effect is fully mediated by relationship stability. Second, this study classified power asymmetry as asymmetrical power discrepancy and asymmetrical power advantage with these two forms playing different roles in influencing opportunism. Results indicate that asymmetrical power discrepancy induces opportunism while asymmetrical power advantage strengthens the negative influence that opportunism has on relationship stability. Additionally, the mediated moderating effect of asymmetrical power advantage by relationship stability is confirmed.
Originality/value
The results provide significant academic and managerial insights that can guide managerial efforts in distinguishing types of power asymmetry, controlling opportunism and further mitigating the consequences of opportunism within a triadic relationship.
Details
Keywords
Christian F. Durach, Frank Wiengarten and Thomas Y. Choi
The present study considers disruption in the buyer–supplier–supplier triad. This triad has a common second-tier supplier as the disruption source, which gives us the tetradic…
Abstract
Purpose
The present study considers disruption in the buyer–supplier–supplier triad. This triad has a common second-tier supplier as the disruption source, which gives us the tetradic context. The goal is to advance the knowledge on how a first-tier supplier's resilience against lower-tier disruptive events can be developed through horizontally connecting with the other first-tier supplier and how the buyer can benefit from its first-tier suppliers' resilience capability.
Design/methodology/approach
Data from 33 triads was collected and analyzed.
Findings
As predicted, coopetition between two first-tier suppliers increases the first-tier supplier's capability to be resilient to disruptive events emanating from a lower tier source. However, contrary to initial theorization, the first-tier supplier's resilience capability affects the buyer's performance during disruptive events negatively. With increasing buyer–supplier social bonds, this negative relationship can partly be alleviated.
Research limitations/implications
Analyzing resilience within a triad to a disruption in the tetradic context reveals unexpected dynamics. Individual supplier's resilience may have a negative impact on the buyer's resilience in certain disruption events.
Practical implications
The buyer can increase collective suppliers' resilience through establishing horizontal links. To prevent becoming a victim of the supplier's resilience in the event of a second-tier disruption, a buyer needs to become a member of the supplier's relational network.
Originality/value
We propose that resilience can rest with the suppliers. This observation has implications for the buyer when selecting and coordinating suppliers. Further, it considers a context beyond a triad by venturing into the tetradic context. We anticipate more studies in tetrads in future and this study can serve as a bridge.
Details
Keywords
Antony Potter and Antony Paulraj
The past decade has seen substantial changes in how organizational leaders work with external stakeholders to improve innovation performance. As leaders have encouraged the…
Abstract
Purpose
The past decade has seen substantial changes in how organizational leaders work with external stakeholders to improve innovation performance. As leaders have encouraged the extensive involvement of suppliers and customers into the innovation process this has led to the formation of supplier innovation triads that are often governed by a portfolio of strategic alliances. The purpose of this paper is to explore how leaders’ inter-firm relationships and strategic alliances influence the development of supplier innovation triads.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample of firms in the Toyota supplier association is constructed from multiple data sets, including the Japan Patent Office, BoardEx and S&PCapitalIQ. The authors test the hypotheses using multivariate techniques, moderation analysis and endogeneity tests.
Findings
The results indicate that leadership relationships to Toyota and its suppliers have a positive effect on the formation of supplier innovation triads. The authors find that firm–external leadership relationships and alliance partner diversity have differential moderating effects on how customer and supplier leadership relationships could be used to build supplier innovation triads.
Research limitations/implications
The results focus on the firms within the Toyota supplier association, and this limits the paper’s generalizability. Although patent data provide a detailed information resource, it do not capture all collaborations.
Originality/value
The authors expand the leadership literature by undertaking one of the first studies of inter-firm leadership relationships and their differential effects on innovation triads. The authors contribute to the literature by exploring the antecedents and moderating factors that influence buyer–supplier–supplier triads within an innovation setting.
Details
Keywords
Melek Akın Ateş, Jan Van den Ende and Guido Ianniello
The purpose of this paper is to investigate inter-organizational coordination (IOC) patterns between the buying firm, design agency, and component supplier in new product…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate inter-organizational coordination (IOC) patterns between the buying firm, design agency, and component supplier in new product development (NPD) projects and to identify the determinants of these approaches.
Design/methodology/approach
Seven NPD projects are examined using the multiple-case study method. Data are collected from five design agencies, two buying firms, and two suppliers in Italy and the Netherlands.
Findings
Building on organizational information-processing and resource dependence theories, and based on the case study findings, four patterns of IOC approaches are proposed: buyer as mediator, buyer-designer partnership, designer as integrator, and team design activities. Two determinants of these approaches are suggested: the degree of novelty of the product/project (radical vs incremental) and the design approach (user oriented vs design driven).
Research limitations/implications
Although the NPD projects are chosen from a wide variety of industries, the relatively small number of cases limits generalizability. The four IOC approaches proposed in this study should be tested in wider samples, possibly by means of the survey method.
Practical implications
The findings suggest that practitioners need to understand the determinants of the different IOC approaches to manage joint NPD projects most effectively. The authors also suggest that practitioners pay attention to the distinct roles of different types of suppliers while deciding on the appropriate coordination mechanisms to adopt. Finally, the results illustrate that buying firms need to consider empowering a supplier in an incremental NPD project if the supplier has a very distinctive capability that does not exist in the buying firm.
Originality/value
Previous research primarily focusses on dyadic-level buyer-supplier relationships in NPD projects. In this study, the authors adopt triads as the unit of analysis and specifically focus on cases that involve both component suppliers and design agencies.
Details
Keywords
Bin Guo, Xi Li, Tanfei Liu and Dong Wu
Supplier–supplier coopetition is vital to buyer innovation in reality. However, it has not received enough attention in prior research. Integrating the…
Abstract
Purpose
Supplier–supplier coopetition is vital to buyer innovation in reality. However, it has not received enough attention in prior research. Integrating the ability-motivation-opportunity framework of organizational learning perspective and the awareness-motivation-capability framework of competitive dynamics theory, this paper investigates the effect of supplier–supplier coopetition within supplier network on buyer innovation, as well as the contingent role of the relational attributes -- duration and tie strength dispersion of buyer–suppliers relationship at the supplier network level.
Design/methodology/approach
Testing this model on the secondary data of supply networks formed by 204 US listed buyer firms in SIC code 28, 35, 36 during 2008–2019, the authors utilize a fixed-effect regression model to investigate the relationship between supplier–supplier coopetition and the focal buyer's innovation.
Findings
The authors provide support for the positive influence of supplier–supplier cooperation on buyer innovation and an inverted U-shaped relationship between supplier–supplier competition and the focal buyer's innovation. The buyer–suppliers tie strength dispersion amplified the above two effects, and supplier–supplier cooperation mitigates the effect of supplier–supplier competition on the focal buyer's innovation.
Originality/value
Extending the traditional dyadic view to a network-level view via linking the supplier–supplier dyad and the buyer–suppliers dyad, this paper contributes to a better understanding of supplier–supplier coopetition and its impact on buyer innovation with learning and competitive tension as the underlying explanations, and validates the contingent role of buyer–suppliers relational attributes.
Details
Keywords
Xu Chen, Xiaojun Wang, Xiaoqiang Zhu and Joseph Amankwah-Amoah
This paper seeks to fill the literature gap that lacks of exploring negotiation strategy with competing partners under asymmetric production-cost information. The purpose of this…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to fill the literature gap that lacks of exploring negotiation strategy with competing partners under asymmetric production-cost information. The purpose of this paper is to examine firms’ optimal contract negotiation strategies in buyer–supplier–supplier triads where there are concurrent negotiations between the retailer and two competing manufacturers.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors consider a two-echelon supply chain, in which the retailer has the option of segmented or unified negotiation policy, whereas the two competing manufacturers can withhold or share production cost information in the negotiation. Based on game theory, the authors derive the manufacturers’ optimal wholesale prices and the retailer’s optimal retail prices with eight possible scenarios. Optimal strategic choices and operational decisions are then explored through the comparative analysis of equilibriums of eight possible scenarios.
Findings
The authors find that the retailer will adopt different negotiation strategies depending on manufacturers’ decisions on sharing or withholding their production-cost information. When both manufacturers share their production-cost information, the retailer will adopt a unified negotiation policy. The high-efficiency manufacturer should adopt the same information-sharing strategy as the low-efficiency manufacturer in order to gain more profit.
Originality/value
The modelling helps to bring further clarity in supply chain contract negotiation by offering a conceptual framework to enhance our understanding of the effects of information-sharing strategy and negotiation policy in the negotiation process form the perspectives of all engaging parties. Managerial insights derived from the research will enable retailers and manufacturers to make informed and better strategic and operational decisions to improve market competitiveness.
Details