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The purpose of this paper is to utilize middle-range theorizing to examine whether a US manufacturer can leverage supply chain orientation (SCO) to garner responsiveness from a global supplier. To capture the interplay of macro-level institutional environments, the authors examine the moderating effect of institutional distance on the SCO–supplier responsiveness relationship.

Primary survey data collected from US manufacturers are utilized to measure SCO and supplier responsiveness. Two secondary data sets (EIU and GLOBE) capture formal and informal distance at the institutional level and are used to test the moderating effect of institutional distance.

The research finds that SCO can facilitate global supplier responsiveness. A post hoc exploratory analysis reveals a three-way interaction, where the SCO–supplier responsiveness relationship is strengthened when formal and informal institutions are either very similar or very different.

The research offers a more nuanced understanding of manufacturer–supplier relationships in global supply chains by demonstrating how country-level (macro) characteristics can influence firm-level (micro) supply chain phenomena. It extends research on SCO by illustrating how institutional distance interacts with a manufacturer’s ability to leverage SCO to enable supplier responsiveness.

Manufacturers should increase their attentiveness to institutional distance. When both formal and informal distances are different (i.e. high distance), SCO can create a powerful lever to improve global supplier responsiveness. Likewise, when formal and informal institutions are similar (i.e. low distance), SCO reinforces joint efforts and collaboration to create additive benefits, whereby suppliers are incentivized to be responsive to unexpected environmental changes.

This research addresses the growing call for more empirical studies that examine how country-level institutions influence firm-level phenomena. It also utilizes secondary data to serve as a proxy for formal and informal institutional distance.

Despite anecdotal evidence of the performance implications of just‐in‐time (JIT) implementation, little empirical research has been conducted. Examines total system JIT’s empirical relationships with a variety of performance outcomes. Total system JIT encompasses JIT purchasing, JIT production, and JIT selling. In a mail survey of 200 logistics executives, total system JIT was found to be: inversely related to weeks of inventory (inclusive of inbound, in‐process, and outbound); inversely related to the number of layers in various functional areas (e.g. marketing); and positively related to three different indicators of financial performance (ROI, profits, and ROS). Results, managerial implications, and further research are discussed.

Benchmarking has become more commonplace in recent years as managers sought to improve their firms' operations by examining strategic practices of leading companies. The focus of the current research is the benchmarking of logistics among United States manufacturers. The researchers explore the relationships between benchmarking practices and selected organizational variables. Benchmarking relates to size, internal and supplier performance measurement, organizational formalization, and technology adoption.

Examines empirically which of a range of variables affect managers′ perceptions of the management information system (MIS) designed to support logistics. The results suggest that the adoption of computer software, the use of specific informational control devices and some aspects of logistics organisation have an effect in both smaller and larger firms. Other variables, such as the title and tenure of the senior logistics executive, do not systematically predict variance in managers′ perceptions of logistics MIS.

This empirical research investigates the effect of product standardisation on logistics in a cross‐section of United States manufacturers. Relying on contingency theory, the effect of product standardisation on the structure of logistics within the organisation, logistical strategy and logistical system flexibility are examined. In comparison to manufacturers that standardise output, those which customise output were found to consolidate fewer logistics activities centrally within a single department, to be less formalised, to update their logistics strategic plan more frequently and to display greater logistical flexibility.

Faced with environmental volatility and increased competition, firms are turning to supply chain management and associated time‐based initiatives to develop sustainable competitive advantages. This research examines just‐in‐time (JIT) as one such logistics strategy. While prior research has focused on internal and upstream JIT (i.e., production and purchasing), the present research examines the extent to which exchange with downstream customers is just‐in‐time oriented. The results of the research show that JIT with customers is associated with organizational designs that are more decentralized, integrated, and formalized and with better performance in terms of less finished goods inventory and higher overall financial performance. The analysis controls for firm size, production technology, and tenure of the senior logistics executive and shows that the effects of JIT with customers on organizational structure and performance are, with a limited number of exceptions, relatively robust.

Logistics is becoming an increasingly important part of overall retail strategy because it provides opportunities for enhanced profit, market growth and sustainable competitive advantage. This research examines the underlying factors which impact retail logistics. The factors found are warehousing/transportation, supplier performance/communications, internal information systems, activity levelling and inventory/cost reduction. The extent to which many supplier evaluation criteria are used is shown to vary with some of these five underlying operational dimensions.

Questions whether banks were marketing themselves before the 1950s advent of scientific inquiry on services marketing. The results show banks segmented the overall market on demographics such as age (during the 1880s), gender (as early as the 1830s), and national origin (as early as the 1850s), on user status in terms of current, potential, and past customers (around 1900), and on geography (as early as the 1890s). The efforts of bankers are compared to a historical periodization of segmentation, and the conclusion is drawn that banks were marketing themselves well before 1930.

The research empirically investigates the relationships among supply chain B2B e‐commerce, environmental uncertainty, organizational structure, and time‐based delivery performance. The results show that B2B e‐commerce enhances time‐based delivery performance. The process turbulence component of environmental uncertainty has direct influence on B2B e‐commerce implementation and an indirect influence as mediated by the integration dimension of organizational structure. Process turbulence thus indirectly has a positive effect on time‐based delivery performance, whereas demand unpredictability has no effect. Integration within the firm associates with B2B e‐commerce implementation, while decentralization and formal control are unrelated to B2B e‐commerce.

Challenges the idea of an unconditional and positive influence of knowledge on performance without regard to environmental uncertainty. Focuses on applied process knowledge spanning the supply chain (i.e. considers supplier, internal, and customer sources). A survey of 208 manufacturing firms found the association between applied process knowledge and firm market performance is positive and statistically significant when demand unpredictability is high (but not when low); statistically significant when product churning (uncertainty) is high (but not when low); and not moderated by core production or logistics process change. Firm size and production technology were also controlled. Firms that can determine the moderating effect of the different types of environmental uncertainty they face upon their knowledge‐performance relationship will perform better in terms of market performance indicators.