Search results

This paper is to explore how cross-functional integration (CFI) of production-marketing can impact the firm's build-to-order (BTO) competitiveness, marketing performance (MP) and financial performance (FP).

Empirical study with the structural equation modeling approach is applied. Six hypotheses are constructed and tested based on survey data collected from Chinese manufacturing firms.

The survey data supports that production-marketing integration (PMI) improves BTO competitiveness (BTOC) and MP and that BTOC also positively affects marketing outcome which, in turn, impacts a firm's FP. The results reveal that CFI of production-marketing is an effective approach for achieving the BTO manufacturing strategy and can improve organizational performance.

The paper uncovers the role of CFI of production-marketing in BTO manufacturing strategy and its impacts on a firm's MP and FP and provides important managerial implications for practitioners to improve organizational time-based competitiveness and performance in today's time-based competition era.

The purpose of this paper is to unpack the black box of post-merger and acquisition (M&A) integration of reverse M&A by Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs).

This research adopts multiple cases of Chinese reverse M&A. Data are collected using the approaches of in-depth interviews, storytelling and narratives.

This research identifies various antecedents underlying Chinese post-M&A integration, such as asymmetries in resources, capabilities, vision and status between Chinese MNEs and acquired firms. The post-M&A integration process of Chinese reverse M&A consists of a top-down effortless integration initiated by Chinese MNEs with both benefits and problems, and a bottom-up reverse integration conducted by acquired firms.

By linking the pre-M&A phase and the post-M&A phase, this research builds a new model of post-M&A integration of Chinese reverse M&A from an indigenous Wu Wei paradigm. The new model counterpoises extant literature, shifting from the task and efficiency-focussed view to the people and harmony-focussed view.

The study aims to examine the effects of guanxi and harmonious leadership on acquisition performance and the role of sociocultural integration as a mediating mechanism impacting the above links, with a focus on Chinese cross-border acquisitions in The Netherlands.

Data were collected through survey questionnaire with 91 respondents who work in Dutch-acquired companies. Regression analysis was used for exploring the relationship.

The study finds that both guanxi and harmonious leadership are positive to acquisition performance, and sociocultural integration represents a significant mediating mechanism by which guanxi and harmonious leadership can result in improved acquisition performance.

This study contributes to culture research by emphasizing the clarification of specific Chinese cultural values and cultural practices in cross-border acquisitions and examining the role of guanxi and harmonious leadership in acquisition performance. Meanwhile, this study helps to unveil Chinese cross-border acquisitions in The Netherlands by examining the mediating force – sociocultural integration.

Internal supply chain refers to the chain of activities within a company that concludes with providing a product to the customer. This process involves multiple functions within companies such as sales, production, and distribution. It is obvious that a company's performance would be enhanced by the integration of these functions. However, there is no consensus yet on how integration is to be defined and measured. The purpose of this paper is to present research that was conducted with the goal of developing an instrument for the measurement of internal supply chain integration.

Scale items were identified from current literature and the resulting survey instrument was sent out to a sample of New Zealand manufacturers. Statistical analysis was conducted to purify and validate the instrument.

In total, three dimensions of integration were identified, labelled coordination, communication, and affective relationship. This paper makes a contribution towards developing a consensus in the understanding and measurement of the integration construct.

The selection and exclusion of measurement items for the survey have followed established principles of survey research, but may have been affected by the personal bias of the author. While every attempt has been made to comprehensively capture the state of the research up to the time of the study, there may be some omissions. The sample for the survey was drawn from a database of New Zealand businesses, thus the results are generalizable only to the extent that these businesses represent the population of all businesses. Another limitation is that no prior survey/case studies were carried out to collect practitioner's definitions/measures for integration.

The authors hope to have made a contribution here towards building a consensus among practitioners and researchers in defining and measuring internal supply chain integration. For practitioners, the measurement instrument offers a self‐assessment tool for internal supply chain integration. This should help them in identifying areas for improvement.

The contribution of this paper consists of: development of an instrument for the measurement of integration, validating the instrument against a criterion, and the identification of three dimensions of integration – communication, coordination, and affective relationship. The unique contributions of this paper are the validation of the instrument against a criterion and the identification of “affective relationship” as a dimension of internal supply chain integration.

The United Kingdom differs from most of its partners in the European Community in that its farmers generally prefer non co‐operative channels of distribution for their produce. The proportion of farm produce distributed through co‐operatives is considerably smaller than is generally the case in Europe. This paper is concerned with the contribution of co‐operative organisational structure and behaviour to the variations in co‐operative market shares found in European agriculture. It is argued that there is a clear relationship between organisational factors and the market position of the co‐operative sector in each country and that this has implications for the encouragement of co‐operative organisation which is an aim of UK public policy.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the motives, structure and performance attributes of horizontal cooperations between logistics service providers (LSPs). Based on an analytical classification model, distinctive types of logistics cooperation that characterize the logistics landscape are identified.

Empirical data were collected on horizontal LSP cooperations from managers of German LSPs. Different uni‐ and multi‐variate statistical methods including ANOVA and cluster analysis were applied to the dataset of 226 cooperations for a total of 6,081 involved parties.

Horizontal cooperations with other LSPs are an organizational form used by 57 percent of LSPs. Cooperation decisions are substantially driven by external market objectives. Six distinctive types of cooperation are identified. They reveal the dominance of multi‐lateral and international networks that are mainly based on contractual agreements. There is a clear preference for partners with similar market competencies and for strong functional integration. Despite its inherent complexity, performance of these cooperations is high – its less than 19 percent failure rate makes these cooperations substantially more stable than cooperations within manufacturing industries.

This study is limited to an exploratory, descriptive approach in providing a sound understanding of the cooperation landscape.

The findings contribute transparency to horizontal LSP cooperations and a common understanding of their idiosyncrasies. The conclusions help logistics managers to position themselves better within the cooperation landscape. Further, the analyses offer managers a conceptual classification of horizontal LSP cooperations and some guidance on how to structure their individual LSP cooperations more successfully.

This paper is the first empirical study that defines the types of cooperation that comprise the logistics cooperation landscape. The analysis integrates a holistic perspective of their contractual, organizational, functional, geographical, service and resource scope and matches them with underlying motives and performance attributes.

There are many studies on the impact of supply chain integration (SCI) on performance. However, the definitions, the measurements, the sample sizes, and scope of both SCI and the performance vary significantly from research to research. Conclusions are not consistent either. Researchers still believe that little is known about the impact of SCI on performance and call for more empirical research. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact on quality practices and quality performance of upstream integration with suppliers and downstream integration with customers.

The research is based on the empirical data from a large international survey of over 600 manufacturing companies from 20 countries. An intensive literature review was conducted on the definition and scope of SCI as well as its relationship with quality practice and performances. In total, five hypotheses were formulated and a conceptual model was proposed. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses reflecting and interrelationship among the four variables.

The research reveals that downstream integration with customers influences both the quality management practice and the quality performance of the company, while upstream integration with suppliers only influences the quality practice but not the quality performance.

This research is different to previous research in three aspects. First, SCI covers both the upstream integration with suppliers and downstream integration with customers. Second, integration measurement covers both material integration and information integration. Third, it considers both quality management practices and quality performance.

This paper breaks through the limitations of the research on bullwhip effect in the traditional supply chain, extends the research perspective to digital supply chain and discusses the weakening effect of digital supply chain on bullwhip effect by comparing the overall performance of the two.

This paper starts with the weakening mechanism of supply chain digitization on bullwhip effect, builds bullwhip effect models of traditional supply chain and digital supply chain, respectively, simulates the influence of supply chain digitization transformation on bullwhip effect by using Matlab software and analyzes the causes of bullwhip effect in supply chain led by T company and the digitization process.

Firstly, digitization can reduce bullwhip effect in multi-level supply chain by reducing information feedback deviation. Second, digital transformation is conducive to improving the overall performance of the supply chain. Third, government incentives can promote the digital transformation of supply chain and inhibit bullwhip effect.

Although the study considers the heterogeneous subject -- the government's incentive effect on digital transformation and information sharing – it does not include the influence of the end node in the supply chain, that is the consumer. In addition, this paper only analyzes and discusses the bullwhip effect on the amplification of demand, without considering the situation that the market contraction will lead to the reduction of demand.

This paper considers the distortion degree and delay degree of information feedback, carries out quantitative analysis of bullwhip effect, builds the bullwhip effect model of traditional supply chain and digital supply chain, uses Matlab software to analyze the difference of the influence of supply chain digital transformation on bullwhip effect suppression and puts forward the corresponding control strategy.

The research shows that digital transformation can reduce the bullwhip effect in multi-layer supply chain by reducing the information feedback deviation, which is conducive to improving the overall supply chain performance, and government support can accelerate the digital transformation of supply chain to a certain extent.

First, break through the limitations of traditional supply chain research, expand the research perspective to digital supply chain and discuss the weakening effect of digital supply chain on bullwhip effect by comparing the overall performance of the two. Second, quantify the bullwhip effect through information feedback bias and provide an analysis method for the weakening of the bullwhip effect. Third, the driving role of the government in the digital transformation of the supply chain is considered in the study, so that the model is more close to the actual situation of enterprise operation.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the drivers that create complexity in the supply chain and develop a mathematical model to measure the level of supply chain complexity (SCC).

Through extensive literature review, the authors discussed various drivers of SCC. These drivers were classified into five dimensions based on expert opinion. Moreover, a novel hybrid mathematical model was developed by integrating analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and grey relational analysis (GRA) methods to measure the level of SCC. A case study was conducted to demonstrate the applicability of the developed model and analyze the SCC level of the company in the study.

The authors identified 22 drivers of SCC, which were further clustered into five complexity dimensions. The application of the developed model to the company in the case study showed that the SCC level of the company was 0.44, signifying that there was a considerable scope of improvement in terms of minimizing complexity. The company that serves as the focus of this case study mainly needs improvement in tackling issues concerning government regulation, internal communication and information sharing and company culture.

In this paper, the authors propose a model by integrating AHP and GRA methods that can measure the SCC level based on various complexity drivers. The combination of such methods, considering their ability to convert the inheritance and interdependence of drivers into a single mathematical model, is preferred over other techniques. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first attempt at developing a hybrid multicriteria decision-based model to quantify SCC.

The purpose of this study is to explore how tobacco manufacturing companies can improve their sustainability performance via effective supplier relationship management (SRM).

This study has adopted a single case study of an international tobacco company. The primary data involved semi-structured interviews with participants from the case company who are familiar with sustainable SRM in the tobacco industry and are engaging in various techniques to improve sustainability performance.

The drivers for sustainable SRM commonly identified in literature are observable within the case company. There is also clear evidence of integrating sustainability in its SRM processes. However, the perception of sustainability as a requirement to meet stringent regulations limits its scope and drive in pursuing sustainable SRM. It has also limited supplier sustainability evaluation and performance metrics. Furthermore, the findings of this paper reinforce the importance of a procurement team’s ability to work with other functional teams in implementing sustainable SRM. The findings also contribute to the emerging literature on the impact of sustainability on supplier segmentation and multi-tier supplier management.

This study provides insight into the varying SRM methods used in the tobacco industry to ensure compliance and improve sustainability performance. However, further research is required to explore the generalisability of the findings of this study derived from a single case study.

The tobacco industry is an under-researched industry, particularly in terms of sustainable operations and supply chain management practices. The findings of this study seem to be relevant to those comparable industries with stringent regulations as well.