Search results

The study aspires to enhance comprehension of the intricate interplay between supply chain management (SCM) and resilience in family businesses, thereby offering valuable insights to managers and policymakers endeavouring to foster resilience in uncertain environments.

Commencing from the premise that family businesses (FBs) prioritize the preservation of socio-emotional wealth (SEW) when formulating strategic decisions, this study endeavours to advance understanding of supply chain practices adopted by FBs and their direct impact on resilience during crisis situations or economically challenging periods. Through an exploratory case study of nine FBs, the present research reveals four pivotal strategies in SCM that contribute to their resilience: (i) reorganization of inventory management; (ii) cultivating close relationships with suppliers; (iii) emphasizing product quality and customer retention; and (iv) implementing cost reduction measures to bolster resilience. The aim of the study is to provide an in-depth understanding of the intricate interplay between SCM and resilience in FBs, thereby offering valuable insights to managers and policymakers endeavouring to foster resilience in uncertain environments.

Our approach offers a theoretical framework for SCM aligned with prior research on the interplay between characteristics of family businesses and resilience strategies. Furthermore, this paper illustrates how factors such as the emphasis on high-quality products and services by family businesses contribute to achieving non-economic objectives that owners adopt to reconcile family and business needs, creating intrinsic added value for the company. It reveals various challenges in SCM, including inventory organization changes, supplier closures and the significance of customer retention. Family businesses are implementing product and technology enhancements and leveraging digitization to enhance supply chain processes.

This paper contributes significantly to the field of FBs by highlighting the crucial role of SCM in enhancing business resilience during crises. It empirically examines how the SEW characteristics of FBs influence the reconfiguration of their supply chains to enhance resilience, presenting a theoretical model for this context. Our theoretical framework employs an SEW perspective to elucidate how FBs respond to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic by adapting their SCM processes to safeguard their social and emotional legitimacy, organizational visibility and reputation. These adaptations gain particular relevance during crises or turbulent conditions, potentially leading to alterations in how FBs formulate their supply chain strategies and manage supply chain-related processes.

Drawing on the dynamic capability view, this study aims to examine the relationships between big data analytics capability (BDAC) and sustainable supply chain performance (SSCP) by exploring the mediating effects of knowledge development (KD) in terms of knowledge acquisition, information distribution, shared meaning and achieved memory.

Data were collected by questionnaire survey from 300 manufacturing organizations. Structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses.

It was found that all the dimensions of KD were positively related to BDAC and SSCP. Although no direct association was established between BDAC and SSCP, the empirical findings indicated that all the dimensions of KD fully mediated the relationship between BDAC and SSCP. This highlights that organizations need to harness KD because developing BDAC alone may not be sufficient.

No previous research has explored how KD dimensions such as knowledge acquisition, information distribution, shared meaning and achieved memory mediate the relationship between BDAC and SSCP. This paper addresses this gap in the literature and contributes to the existing debate to better understand the conditions in which BDAC affects SSCP. Pointers for future research are also identified.

Due to the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, increasing the use of AI in healthcare is critical, but few studies have explored the extent to which physicians cooperate with AI in their work to achieve productive and innovative performance, which is a key issue in operations management (OM). We conducted empirical research to answer this question.

We developed a conceptual model based on the ambidextrous perspective. To test our model, we collected data from 200 Chinese hospitals. One senior and one junior physician from each hospital participated in this research so that we could get a more comprehensive view. Based on the sample of 400 participants and the conceptual model, we examined whether different types of AI use have distinct impacts on physicians’ productivity and innovation by conducting hierarchical regression and post hoc tests. We also introduced team psychological safety climate (TPSC) and AI technology uncertainty (AITU) as moderators to investigate this topic in further detail.

We found that augmentation AI use is positively related to overall productivity and innovative job performance, while automation AI use is negatively related to these two outcomes. Furthermore, we focused on the impacts of the ambidextrous use of AI on these two outcomes. The results highlight the positive impacts of complementary use on both outcomes and the negative impact of balance on innovative job performance. TPSC enhances the positive impacts of complementary use on productivity, whereas AITU inhibits the negative impacts of automation and balanced use on innovative job performance.

In the age of AI, organizations face greater trade-offs between performance and technology management. This study contributes to the OM literature from the perspectives of operational performance and technology management in three ways. First, it distinguishes among different AI implementations and their diverse impacts on productivity and innovative performance. Second, it identifies the different conditions under which automation AI use and augmentation are superior. Third, it extends the ambidextrous perspective by becoming an early adopter of this approach to explore the implications of different types of AI use in light of contingency factors.

This paper aims to analyze the effects of enabling management control systems (MCSs) and relational capabilities (interorganizational learning and coordination) on conflict management in innovation ecosystems.

Shedding light on relational governance, structural equation modeling (symmetric analysis) and qualitative comparative fuzzy-set analysis (asymmetric analysis) were applied to a sample of 164 Brazilian firms associated with science and technology parks (STPs), a specific type of innovation ecosystem.

The results of the symmetric analysis showed that enabling MCSs have a direct and positive effect on conflict management, as well indirect effects through interorganizational learning and coordination. The results of the asymmetric analysis indicated four solutions to promote high levels of conflict management, with enabling MCS solutions standing out, as they are present in the majority of cases in the sample.

Interorganizational conflict in innovation ecosystems are inevitable, but the previous literature is inconclusive about how the interrelation between MCS and relational capabilities can foster the management of these conflicts. By providing evidence on the predictors and solutions that lead to high levels of conflict management, this study presents valuable insights into how firms and STPs can mutually promote organizational and relational benefits throughout the innovation activities developed among those involved in innovation ecosystems.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between absorptive capacity, relational capital and interorganizational relationship performance and examine the moderating effect of contractual governance on this relationship.

This study used a quantitative design, analyzing data collected through a survey questionnaire. The sampling frame consisted of 111 cross-industry, small and medium-sized manufacturers in Malaysia. The research model was analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results show that interorganizational relationship performance is positively influenced by relational capital and absorptive capacity. While absorptive capacity has a positive effect on relational capital, this study finds empirical evidence that contractual governance weakens the effect of absorptive capacity on relational capital. Furthermore, this study also examines the hitherto under-researched moderating effect of contractual government on absorptive capacity and relational capital and their relationship with interorganizational relationship performance.

This study provides insights into the interorganizational relationship among SMEs and explains the nature of knowledge management in this context. This study shows the potential role of absorptive capacity in building close cross-border interorganizational relationships.

This study aims to analyze the factors that drive or prevent interorganizational data sharing in the context of digital transformation (DT). Data sharing appears as a precondition for companies to capture emerging opportunities in supply chain management and for product-related servitization; however, there are ongoing concerns, and data are often perceived as the “new oil.” It is thus important to gain a better understanding of the determinants of firms’ decisions.

The authors develop an embedded case study analysis involving 16 firms within an extended supply network in the automotive industry. The authors focus on the peculiarities of the new context, as opposed to elements highlighted by research prior to the advent of the latest technologies. Abductive reasoning is applied to the theoretical foundations of the resource-based view, resource dependence theory and the complex adaptive systems perspective.

Data sharing is largely underpinned by factors identified prior to DT, such as data specificity, dependence dynamics and protection mechanisms and the dynamism of the business context. DT, however, can influence the extent of data sharing. New factors concern complementarities whenever data are pooled from different sources and digital platforms, as well as different forms of data ownership protection.

This study stresses that data sharing in the context of DT can be explained through established theoretical lenses, providing the integration of elements accounting for new technological opportunities.

Firms are increasingly pressured to comply with mandatory supply chain transparency (SCT) regulations. Drawing on information processing theory (IPT), this study aims to show how blockchain technology can address information uncertainty and equivocality in assuring regulatory compliance in an interorganizational network (ION).

IPT is applied in a single case study of an ION in the mining industry that aimed to implement blockchain to address mandatory SCT regulations. The authors build on a rich proprietary data set consisting of interviews and substantial secondary material from actors along the supply chain.

The case shows that blockchain creates equality between actors, enables compliance and enhances efficiency in an ION, reducing information uncertainty and equivocality arising from conflict minerals regulation. The system promotes engagement and data sharing between parties while protecting commercial sensitive information. The lack of central authority prevents larger partners from taking control. The system provides mineral provenance and a regulation-compliant record. System cost analysis shows that the system is efficient as it is inexpensive relative to volumes and values of metals transacted. Issues were identified related to collecting richer human rights data for assurance and compliance with due diligence regulations.

The authors provide some of the first evidence in the operations and supply chain management literature of the specific architecture, costs and limitations of using blockchain for SCT. Using an IPT lens in an ION setting, the authors demonstrate how blockchain-based systems can address two key IPT challenges: environmental uncertainty and equivocality.

Drawing upon resource dependence theory, this study aims to examine how a firm’s information technology (IT) capabilities (i.e. IT integration and IT reconfiguration) influence its responses to disruptions – bridging with a current supplier and buffering with an alternative supplier. We further examine how such relationships are moderated by the firm–supplier relative dependence (i.e. firm dependence advantage and supplier dependence advantage).

Based on data from 141 match-paired surveys of firms in China, we test our model.

Our study finds that IT integration positively influences bridging and IT reconfiguration positively influences buffering. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the positive impact of IT integration on bridging is negatively influenced by the firm’s dependence (FD) advantage but positively moderated by the supplier’s dependence advantage. By contrast, the positive impact of IT reconfiguration on buffering is negatively influenced by the FD advantage.

Our study provides a more nuanced insight into the effects of IT capabilities on disruption responses and a better understanding of the buyer–supplier dependence boundary conditions under which these effects vary.

This study aims to examine the factors that influence the relationship between sustainability and financial performance (FP) of the European listed companies.

This study analyzed data from 795 companies in 21 European countries by applying linear mixed-effects multilevel regressions, a two steps system generalized method of moments and quantile regression models to uncover the links between sustainability and FP.

The past four decades have witnessed abundant research to determine the relationship between corporate sustainability and FP. Thus, conducting further research in 2023 could be seen as “reinventing the wheel.” Yet, earlier research considered firms as isolated entities with sustainability and FP being dependent only on that firm’s actions. By contrast, with the help of network governance theory, this study shows that a firm’s sustainability and FP depend on an interplay among interorganizational actors, such as institutional qualities, macroeconomic factors and an embrace of sustainability. Here, large firms play an essential role. Three significant findings are drawn. First, sustainability performance has a significant impact on FP in the European context. Second, the institutional quality (IQ) of the rule of law and control of corruption plays a crucial role in enhancing sustainability and FP, and finally the interaction of IQ and economic growth helps to increase companies’ market value (Tobin’s Q). The consistent and empirically robust findings offer key lessons to policymakers and practitioners on the interplay among multiple actors in corporate sustainability and FP.

A synergetic multifaced relationship between governmental institutions and corporations is inevitable for ensuring sustainable development. The degree of intimacy in the relationship, of course, will be determined by the macroeconomic environment.

In this research, this study theoretically and empirically identified that corporate sustainability and FP are not solely dependent on corporate operation. Rather, it is transformed, modified and shaped through an interaction of multiple actors’ trajectories in the macro business environment.

The paper aims to provide managerial recommendations for implementing circular economy (CE) principles in both organizational and interorganizational contexts, including when using digital tools, such as building information modeling (BIM) and blockchain. Drawn from the construction sector in the Netherlands, the findings can be generalized to similar sectors where a company may receive multiple inputs as part of its supply chain augmented by digital technologies.

Design addresses the research question: what are the strategic and tactical approaches of organizations on the CE pathway? Sub-questions target initiatives pursued by participants, and look toward information, roles and functions for supporting the CE process. Applying a multiple-case study approach (21 semi-structured interviews with 29 participants) the paper explores strategic initiatives of construction companies implementing CE pathways. The strength of the research design comes from facilitation of rich and deep qualitative insights from Netherlands-based managers embedded within global supply chains contributing to conceptual mapping. A limitation is data from one country (though representing both national and multinational companies).

Interviewed managers share guidance for production-related construction companies anchored in materials and product design. Recommendations include to (1) develop both internally and externally the awareness of CE amongst leaders, (2) communicate with internal and external stakeholders for shared vision across the supply chain, (3) start with pilot projects, and (4) ensure product data-integration for CE business models through computer modeling and blockchain for decision-making processes, choices of materials, business model coordination and product (re)design. Continuous learning about CE roles and responsibilities amidst organizational process restructuring is required throughout linear to CE transitions. Extending the time for the CE principles evaluation process would allow for reconsideration of decisions made for CE implemented projects.

A novel CE gameplan with a hurdles and recommendations checklist provides an operational interface with decision making points between internal factors for the host organization and external supply chain partners.