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1 – 10 of over 20000Alistair Brandon‐Jones and Sinéad Carey
Whilst e‐procurement has significant potential to reduce the purchasing costs of an organisation, the realisation of these savings requires user compliance. The purpose of this…
Abstract
Purpose
Whilst e‐procurement has significant potential to reduce the purchasing costs of an organisation, the realisation of these savings requires user compliance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which user‐perceived e‐procurement quality (EPQ) (operationalised through the dimensions of professionalism, processing, training, specification, content, and usability) influences both system and contract compliance.
Design/methodology/approach
User perceptions of EPQ were examined in four UK organisations using survey data from 274 respondents.
Findings
Strong evidence was found of a positive relationship between user‐perceived EPQ and both system and contract compliance. System compliance was most strongly influenced by professionalism and content dimensions, whilst contract compliance was most strongly influenced by processing, specification, and content dimensions.
Research limitations/implications
Data were collected from e‐procurement users in four organisations, which may limit the extent to which findings can be generalised.
Practical implications
User perceptions of e‐procurement provision significantly influence system and contract adoption. Practitioners should pay attention to management of different dimensions of perceived quality as they may have different effects on both contract and system compliance.
Originality/value
This paper is the first to empirically assess the relationship between user‐perceived EPQ and compliance. Its findings challenge the assumption that the monopolistic dynamics common within internal services, such as e‐procurement provision, are sufficient to ensure compliance. Dissatisfied individuals invariably find ways to circumvent mandatory systems and contracts.
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Timothy G. Hawkins and William A. Muir
Public procurement officials are bound by extensive policies, procedures, and laws. However, procurement professionals perpetually struggle to comply with these vast requirements…
Abstract
Public procurement officials are bound by extensive policies, procedures, and laws. However, procurement professionals perpetually struggle to comply with these vast requirements — particularly in the acquisition of services. The purpose of this research is to explore knowledge-based factors affecting compliance of service contracts. A regression model using data acquired via survey from 219 U.S. Government procurement professionals reveals that the extent of compliance is affected by buyer experience, personnel turnover, the sufficiency with which service requirements are defined, post-award buyer-supplier communication, and the sufficiency of procurement lead time. From these results, implications for practice and theory are drawn. The study concludes with a discussion of limitations and directions for future research.
Public procurement is widely used to promote objectives of an economic, environmental and social nature, such as the economic development of disadvantaged social groups. This…
Abstract
Public procurement is widely used to promote objectives of an economic, environmental and social nature, such as the economic development of disadvantaged social groups. This article elaborates a detailed taxonomy of such “horizontal” policies. This study is valuable, first, to facilitate analysis of the practical phenomenon of horizontal policies and of the policy implications of different approaches and, second, to illuminate and develop the relevant regulatory frameworks under national and international regimes. The taxonomy is based on three key distinctions between the following: 1. policies limited to securing compliance with legal requirements and those that go beyond such requirements; 2. policies applied only to the contract awarded and those that go beyond it; and 3. nine different mechanisms by which policies are implemented in the procurement process.
The legal devices crafted within large organizations are a key component of legal endogeneity theory (LET). While symbolically complying with legislation, legal devices allow…
Abstract
The legal devices crafted within large organizations are a key component of legal endogeneity theory (LET). While symbolically complying with legislation, legal devices allow organizations to infuse managerial logics into the legal field, which eventually diverts law from its initial political goals. Although the LET has considered legal devices such as anti-discrimination guidelines and grievance procedures, this chapter argues that contracts also constitute a locus of symbolic compliance and contribute to the eventual endogenization of regulation. Supplementing LET with a focus on legal intermediation, this chapter explores how contracts are crafted and used by large organizations to respond to regulatory pressure. While other legal instruments are unambiguously managerialized from the outset, contracts are highly versatile legal objects that perform the seemingly opposite functions of symbolically complying with regulation and serving substantive commercial purposes. This discussion of the role of contracts as compliance mechanisms is based on an in-depth empirical study of the French retail industry and its response to a set of regulations that aimed at making their business practices fairer.
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H. Holly Wang, Yanping Zhang and Laping Wu
The purpose of this paper is to investigate contract farming in China, using vegetable production as a case. Specifically, the authors analyze farmers' contract decisions for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate contract farming in China, using vegetable production as a case. Specifically, the authors analyze farmers' contract decisions for different types of contracts, their contract compliance behaviors, and their profitability affected by the contracts both analytically and empirically.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors assume growers with alternative risk preferences make the contract decisions to maximize their expected utilities, under exogenous market price risks and contract terms determined by the processor or wholesaler. Both fixed price and floating price contracts are analyzed. Two surveys of 185 and 85 farm households, respectively, are obtained in Shandong province in 2010, and econometric analyses with both Logit and least square regressions are conducted.
Findings
The results indicate that the determining factors for contract farming are related to farmers' risk attitude, gender, yield, farm size and labor availability. However, contrary to the common belief that contracts are a risk management tool for risk averse farmers, the risk lovers tend to use contract farming instead of risk averters. Female household heads and farms with more labors tend not to use contracts, but larger farms with more acreage are more likely to contract. These suggest Chinese farmers' primary motivation of contracting is not market price risk management, but rather seeking better offers and marketing transaction cost reduction.
Originality/value
The authors believe that this is the first econometric study to analyze contract farming allowing different types of contracts in China. The scenarios include cases without contracts, with fixed price contracts, and with floating price contracts, where the contract price changes to reflect the market price, a very unique yet popular situation in China. Each of the cases is also considered under the situation whether default is possible.
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Barry M. Mitnick and Martin Lewison
Despite the existence of a variety of approaches to the understanding of behavioral and managerial ethics in organizations and business relationships generally, knowledge of…
Abstract
Despite the existence of a variety of approaches to the understanding of behavioral and managerial ethics in organizations and business relationships generally, knowledge of organizing systems for fidelity remains in its infancy. We use halakha, or Jewish law, as a model, together with the literature in sociology, economic anthropology, and economics on what it termed “middleman minorities,” and on what we have termed the Landa Problem, the problem of identifying a trustworthy economic exchange partner, to explore this issue.
The article contrasts the differing explanations for trustworthy behavior in these literatures, focusing on the widely referenced work of Avner Greif on the Jewish Maghribi merchants of the eleventh century. We challenge Greif’s argument that cheating among the Magribi was managed chiefly via a rational, self-interested reputational sanctioning system in the closed group of traders. Greif largely ignores a more compelling if potentially complementary argument, which we believe also finds support among the documentary evidence of the Cairo Geniza as reported by Goitein: that the behavior of the Maghribi reflected their deep beliefs and commitment to Jewish law, halakha.
Applying insights from this analysis, we present an explicit theory of heroic marginality, the production of extreme precautionary behaviors to ensure service to the principal.
Generalizing from the case of halakha, the article proposes the construct of a deep code, identifying five defining characteristics of such a code, and suggests that deep codes may act as facilitators of compliance. We also offer speculation on design features employing deep codes that may increase the likelihood of production of behaviors consistent with terminal values of the community.
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This study aims to understand what primary relationship problem mechanisms can exist in the franchise channel and how exchange partners respond to them. This study demonstrates…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to understand what primary relationship problem mechanisms can exist in the franchise channel and how exchange partners respond to them. This study demonstrates how the franchisor’s relationship problem mechanisms (threat, contract enforcement) affect the franchisee’s negative active responses (venting, threatened withdrawal).
Design/methodology/approach
This study tested hypotheses through multiple regression analysis using data from 200 franchisees in Korea-based food franchise systems.
Findings
The results indicated that threat increases venting and threatened withdrawal, while contract enforcement only increases venting. Venting increases threatened withdrawal. In addition, the results indicated that the franchisor’s behavior monitoring positively moderates the relationship between relationship problem mechanisms and negative active responses.
Originality/value
This study helps strategically manage responses to relationship problems by categorizing ‘relationship problem mechanisms’ into intentional relationship problem mechanisms based on communication (threat) and unintentional relationship problem mechanisms based on action (contract enforcement). This study finds that both relationship problem mechanisms, intentional or unintentional, eventually cause threatened withdrawal directly or indirectly. Even if the threat is merely communication, not action, it is more likely to cause relationship dissolution than contract enforcement by directly triggering any negative active response. This study also finds that behavior monitoring can affect exchange partners through interaction with other management mechanisms rather than directly affecting them.
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The purpose of this working paper is to highlight the challenges and associated risks Federal contracting officers face while conducting business under commercially-based…
Abstract
The purpose of this working paper is to highlight the challenges and associated risks Federal contracting officers face while conducting business under commercially-based contracting legislation and, with concurrent reductions in the acquisition workforce, the potential risks these changes place on the taxpayer. The researcher's thorough review of published articles, along with collegiate discussions with prominent practitioners and academics indicates that the Federal Government may be exposed to increased risks due to recent commercial-practice legislation and structural changes in the acquisition work force. The past decade-long wave of acquisition work-force reductions and commercially inspired acquisition reforms has created a responsive and progressive business environment. Yet, it has done so at the cost of the Federal government becoming less "engaged" in key oversight and management functions. This disengagement may be exposing Federal contracting officers and taxpayers to greater financial, programmatic and performance risks.
Maria Björklund and Helena Forslund
This study aims to illustrate how retail chains with a green image align sustainable logistics actions, logistics measurements and contracts with logistics service providers…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to illustrate how retail chains with a green image align sustainable logistics actions, logistics measurements and contracts with logistics service providers (LSPs), and to develop a classification model that allows for a description of the various shades of green within companies.
Design/methodology/approach
We carried out a multiple case study of four retail chains with a green image operating in the Swedish market, collecting empirical data from the retail chains’ sustainability reports and home pages and conducting interviews with logistics, transportation and supply chain managers.
Findings
Based on the literature, we developed a classification model for judging green image, green logistics actions, green measurements and green contracts. The model is used to illustrate the different shades of green found within the respective retail chains. A green image seems well-aligned with green logistics actions. However, there are more levels to judge, and the measurement systems are not sufficiently developed to track green logistics actions. Contract handling is more developed among retail chains than measurements, which is positive, as this is a way of ensuring that LSPs are involved. In our classification model, greenwashing can be judged in a more nuanced way, delving deeper under the surface.
Research limitations/implications
The provided classification model adds to our knowledge and illustrates the alignment within companies’ sustainable logistics. The robustness of the model can be strengthened by applying it to a larger number of cases and by continually validating its content and evaluation criteria.
Practical implications
The study’s main practical contribution is the classification model, which may potentially serve as a method for managers to easily judge the green alignment of a retail chain’s logistics.
Originality/value
Few empirical studies capture how retail chains measure environmental logistics performance, and even fewer concern contracts stipulating the environmental demands placed on LSPs.
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The new millennium has already presented the Facility Manager with more challenges than the last decade. Fiscal survival, global dominance and, of late, total enterprise security…
Abstract
The new millennium has already presented the Facility Manager with more challenges than the last decade. Fiscal survival, global dominance and, of late, total enterprise security will become the critical issues managed by the Facility Manager in 2002. Unlike a magician, he has no rabbits to pull out of a hat or coins from an ear, the Facility Manager must make timely proactive decisions to make or buy or to stay with or change suppliers of products and services to their respective enterprise. Global outsourcing represents a powerful option to the Facility Manager. The author aims to help the Facility Manager hold existing outsource providers accountable to measurable results and forecasted outcomes, presents a compelling story for new outsource ventures and even addresses outsourcing relationships that need to be strengthened and renewed to allow the Facility Managers to deal with the multiplicity of their position. Lowering the total costs against outsourcing budgets while exceeding the expectations of the enterprise can be achieved with strategic global partners if the reader follows the recommendations of this paper.
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