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The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated conceptual trust building model for supply chain partners’ relationships. It is based on the literature on trust building models from various disciplines.

Various trust building concepts and models were reviewed and five widely referred trust building models were selected from the literature to analyze and integrate the views to develop an integrated conceptual model from supply chain partners’ relationships point of view.

The conceptual frame work suggests that trust is a sum of risk‐worthy characteristics, risk‐worthy rationale and risk‐worthy institutional systems of supply chain members. Though the model represents the trust building process at dyadic level, the concept can simply be extended to any number of levels and perspectives.

The model has considered the trust building perspectives from supply chain partners’ relationships point of view. The discussions of the model lead to empirically testable issues.

The study results suggest that the supply chain members should strive to reduce the risk levels to build trust rather than striving to build trust to reduce the risk. As long as members’ risk levels are within their bearable limits trust can be considered as a risk coping mechanism and when the risk levels exceed their bearable limits the subject of trust turns into risk management/security management.

The trust building concepts developed through this model can be used by both practitioners and researchers on the subject of trust. However the model's application is not limited to supply chain management; it can be easily adapted to any discipline of management.

The purpose of this paper is to understand what breaks trust in a customer supplier relationship and how to repair it.

The approach takes a single case study to test the established theories on trust. It captures the circumstances and conditions of everyday situation in business and it is a longitudinal study covering three years' experience of two organisations in business.

The important findings of this case study are that knowledge, level of risk and level of risk tolerance of customers/suppliers are the main causes of trust break down. Though the research on trust focus on partner's characteristics such as benevolence, honesty, reliability, credibility, integrity, contracts, agreements etc., in the context of B2B relationship these perspectives can only help the partners in evaluating the other partner as trust worthy. Once the partners engage in the relationship the orientation will change towards perspectives of rational risk. If the risk level exceeds their bearable limits, trust will break. Trust repair depends on the convincing power of the trustees, and how and why the trustor should bear the uncertainty or risk involved in the relationship.

With its focus on two business partners this case cannot be generalised to all business settings. However, the in‐depth analysis stimulates further research on how trust may break between partners and how and who (trustor/trustee) should initiate trust repair process.

Practicing managers and research scholars can use this case in trust building process in customer supplier relationship.

The paper presents a case that is original.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a context dependent, multi perspective multilevel trust measurement instrument to measure supply chain members' trust.

Since trust is a context dependent phenomenon and the level of trust between partners cannot be measured easily, a conceptual framework is developed to measure supply chain partners' trust from risk perspective (i.e. risk related to characteristics, rational and institutions/security) considering the relationship as “Risky”, “Risk‐worthy” and “Not risky” and translated them in terms of trust perspectives as “No trust”, “Trust worthy” and “Trust”.

Although the research on trust emphasizes to focus on a member's characteristics such as benevolence, integrity, ability, reliability, credibility, etc, decision to trust require multiple judgments therefore trust should be measured from various context dependent perspectives at multiple levels in relationship from trustor's perceptions and calculations. The key perspectives of trust in supply chain relationship are; characteristics trust, rational trust (cost and benefit, dynamic capabilities, technology) and institutional trust/security system. An important argument of this concept is that trust can only be dyadic.

Researchers on trust have repeatedly confirmed that trust is a multifaceted and context dependent concept. However the business context may not remain the same in the dynamic business environment, therefore this conceptual framework can be used as generalized trust measurement tool.

This paper has attempted to develop a simple and practical multi level trust measurement tool for the complex multi‐dimensional construct of supply chain partners' relationship trust.

This study may be one of the first to develop a multi level trust measurement concept from risk perspectives.

This paper seeks to identify the up‐stream supply chain member's (manufacturers, suppliers, supplier's service providers) characteristics, economics, dynamic capabilities, technology and institutional perspectives of risk in relationship to develop a trust building model through risk evaluation and to address the issue: should a supply chain member strive to build the trust or strive to reduce the risk with its members and from which perspectives?

A conceptual framework was developed considering five key perspectives (characteristics, economics, dynamic capabilities, technology and institutions) to evaluate the member's risk in relationship and derived the hypothesis from the framework. A survey was conducted in UAE packaged food industry upstream supply chain covering senior managers of 102 companies. Data were analysed using multiple regression analyses through SPSS. The selected supply chain members of this industry include packaged food products companies as manufacturers, packaging material converters as suppliers of packaging material to manufacturers and packaging raw material suppliers as supplier's suppliers of manufacturer.

From the survey results it is found that characteristic and institutional risk perspectives influence significantly to initiate a trustworthy relationship. Economics, dynamic capabilities and technology risk perspectives play a significant role to maintain trust in relationship. No perspective of members is found to be significantly risk‐free.

This study has identified the perspectives of risk that can initiate and build trust between supply chain members in the context of a global business environment with a strong institutional system. Further research is required to identify the supply chain member's risk‐worthy characteristics, threshold levels of risk bearing capacity and the extent to which the institutions can reduce the membership risk to build trust.

The study results suggest that the supply chain members should strive to reduce the membership risk levels to build trust rather than striving to build trust to reduce the risk. As long as a member's risk levels are within their bearable limits trust can be considered as a risk coping mechanism and when the risk levels exceed their bearable limits the subject of trust turns into risk management/security management.

This study may be one of the first to develop a trust building model through a risk evaluation process and also one of the first to study the trust in supply chain member's relationship in UAE. Findings from this research should prove useful to management researchers and practitioners.

This paper seeks to empirically identify the major factors that influence physician loyalty behavior in prescribing certain brands of drugs.

Testable hypotheses were developed with respect to physician loyalty behavior regarding drug prescription practices, and a survey questionnaire was designed to capture the data from 71 physicians, as a convenience sample. The hypotheses were tested by PLS path modeling.

The major finding is that tangible rewards to physicians by the pharmaceutical companies lead to prescription loyalty. The second major finding is that the professional values of pharmaceutical sales representatives (PSR) impact significantly on physician prescription loyalty. The hypotheses related to the impact of PSR personality, drug quality, corporate reputation and professional influence on prescription loyalty were not supported in the study.

The results should prove useful to pharmaceutical companies in developing physician loyalty to particular brands as well as enhancing the understanding of drug control authorities and governmental health policy makers, in controlling unethical medical practices by physicians.

This paper reports an original empirical study on physician loyalty behavior in the context of drug prescription.

Trust and commitment (T&C) among the supply chain partners in the context of supply chain management (SCM) are of interest for both researchers and practitioners. This paper analyses literature on T&C and identifies gaps for further research.

The current literature review paper provides a comprehensive perspective on the topic using bibliometric analysis followed by a systematic review of literature. In all, 207 relevant articles were extracted from the Scopus database using the relevant key word searches. For the purpose of the systematic review, another 48 relevant papers were identified through an iterative process. Hence, 255 papers published between the years 1990–2019 were analysed for the sake of this study.

A total of 15 definitions of trust, nine definitions of commitment, 13 classifications of trust, 40 antecedents of trust, six classifications of commitments, 39 consequences of trust, 11 antecedents of commitment and 15 consequences of commitment were identified and analysed. Future research directions were presented.

The study is limited to identifying the antecedents and consequences of T&C. A detailed framework could be developed in future research. The antecedent and consequences for T&C could be discussed in greater detail.

Important implications for managers emerge from this study for building and implementing T&C, as SCM requires a thorough understanding of relationship-building skills. The discussion on the definitions of T&C, types of trust and the antecedents and consequences provides important insights for practitioners for strategy formulation. Results provide important insights and bring about greater clarity for researchers and practitioners on T&C in SCM.

Through rigorous analysis of the prevailing research, this paper extensively reviews literature on T&C in SCM till 2019. It summarises the current status and proposes future research directions.

Although there is evidence that the efforts of pharmaceutical marketing exert a positive and significant influence on physician prescription decisions, the specific mechanisms by which this impact occurs remain uncertain. To address this issue, this study aims to investigate whether the physician’s habit persistence may explain the relationship between marketing efforts such as brand attributes and drug promotion and prescribing behavior. This study also explores whether there was any significant difference between specialists and general practitioners (GPs) regarding the effect of brand attributes and drug promotion on physician’s habit persistence, which influences prescribing behavior.

A survey instrument was administered to physicians, encompassing specialists in a particular field and GPs who provide primary care services. A nonparametric partial least squares multigroup analysis was used to analyze 393 valid responses using partial least squares-structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that the decision to prescribe the drug may be affected by the physician’s habit persistence in the presence of vital brand attributes and drug promotion. The relationship between physician’s habit persistence and prescribing behavior is significant in GPs and specialist groups. The findings also reveal that brand attributes are the most influential and significant determinant of physician’s habit persistence in the GPs group. In addition, physician specialists are more aware of the influence of drug promotion initiatives than GPs. Furthermore, this study discovered that the relationship between drug promotion and physician’s habit persistence indicates a significant difference between specialists and GPs.

Although several marketing scholars discuss the factors influencing prescribing behavior, a few studies have shown the role of brand attributes and drug promotion and their effect on physician’s habit persistence. This study will specifically contribute by examining the mediating role of physician’s habit persistence between marketing efforts and prescribing behavior. In addition, so far, no studies have effectively made a comparative analysis across physicians regarding the effect of marketing efforts on physician’s habit persistence and prescribing behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of direct-to-physician promotion on physicians’ prescription behaviour. There were very few studies which have investigated to what extent the pharmaceutical promotion directed towards physicians influences physicians’ prescription behaviour in the Malaysian context.

A research framework has been developed based on the buyer behaviour stimulus-response model. A survey method has been used to collect data from 154 medical practitioners from private health-care facilities located at Klang valley in Malaysia. IBM SPSS and SmartPLS statistical programs have been used to analyse the data and validate the model.

This study found that personal selling is the most significant promotional tool for physicians’ prescription behaviour, whereas advertising is the least significant one. Sales promotion and public relations are the second and third most significant promotional tools. Direct marketing is found to be not significant.

This paper will help the pharmaceutical companies develop more effective plans to gain a competitive advantage for their business by having a guideline for pharmaceutical marketers as an input to the more efficient allocation of their promotional budgets.

This study has introduced a comprehensive understanding of all the factors in the pharmaceutical promotion that influence physicians’ prescription behaviour in Malaysia and how these factors are interrelated, influencing physicians’ prescribing medicines for patients.

The business enterprises are increasingly focusing on buying and supplying of products and services in a manner to reduce the adverse impacts on the environment, society, and economy. In view of the above, the concept of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has received attention of the industry and academia due to its importance on environmental, social and corporate responsibility through economic performance. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The structured literature review attempts to map the various theories in the SSCM literature from the perspectives of economic performance, environmental dimensions, and social values and ethics.

As supply management is vital for enhancing organizational competitiveness, the present work attempts to investigate the theoretical perspectives in SSCM to develop an understanding of the current research activities and future potentials.

This work aims to gain a number of valid insights for the practitioners and the researchers. It also focuses on the perspectives of governance mechanisms for successful implementation SSCM practices in the business enterprises.

As the theory building initiatives with implications on the conceptualization of SSCM is limited in literature, this work has also been able to identify the trends and relevant research gaps to define the potential areas for future research.

This paper examines supply chain risk management (SCRM) from a holistic systems thinking perspective by considering the different typologies that have evolved as a result of earlier research. The purpose of this paper is to identify important strategic changes in the field and to outline future requirements and research opportunities in SCRM.

The systematic literature review (SLR) methodology employed by this research was used to evaluate and categorise a literature survey of quality articles published over a period of ten years (2000‐2010). Additionally, the findings from the SLR have been strengthened through cross validation against results obtained from an associated text mining activity.

The SLR methodology has provided a rich, unbiased and holistic picture of the advances in the field of SCRM. Consequently, important new research areas have been identified based on a multi‐perspective descriptive and thematic data analysis. In addition, the analysis, based on evolved typologies, indicates a growth of SCRM from a nascent to a fairly established activity over the past decade.

The systematic approach undertaken for the literature review will provide future researchers and managers with an insightful understanding of the scope of the SCRM field. Also, the literature review provides important clues on new research directions for SCRM through identification of gaps in current knowledge.

The holistic approach to SCRM was found to be an important missing link in earlier literature surveys. The outcome of the SLR reported in this paper has provided critical insights into the present and future scope of the SCRM field. The identified research insights, gaps and future directions will encourage new research techniques, with a view to managing the risks in the globalized supply chain environment.