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This study examines the diffusion process of corporate sustainability (CS) in the global automotive industry. It discusses the different roles played by the automakers, as the industry’s focal firms, in diffusing CS strategies throughout their respective supply networks. Studies have explained this phenomenon as being the result of the higher levels of stakeholder exposure faced by focal firms, which generate higher levels of supplier sustainability risk. In this context, the authors examine the effects of three network-related firm characteristics – resource dominance, resource substitutability, and network centrality – in determining the effectiveness of a firm in diffusing CS in its network. For that purpose, we present a theoretical framework from which we derive a set of hypotheses and test them on a sample of the global automotive supply network containing 10,726 firms linked by 45,044 inter-firm relationships. The results lend significant support to the argument that these network-related firm attributes are crucial mechanisms to the process of diffusion of CS strategies in a supply network, thus contributing to extant literatures in strategic management, international business, and sustainable supply chain management.

This study aims to investigate how relatively weaker manufacturers respond to the dominance of stronger suppliers and/or customers. The study also analyzes how the competitive intensity perceived by manufacturers moderates their responses to powerful chain partners.

Using hierarchical regression, data from 1,417 manufacturing companies sampled from the fifth and sixth versions of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey were analyzed.

This study found that relatively weaker manufacturers often adopt exploration strategies to countervail the dominance of suppliers and adopt exploitation strategies to deal with more powerful customers. In dealing with both dominant suppliers and customers, relatively weaker manufacturers are prone to adopt exploration and exploitation strategies simultaneously and hence become ambidextrous. Furthermore, the link between dominance in supply chains and the exploration (exploitation) strategy is strengthened (weakened) as market competition perceived by manufacturers intensifies.

The contribution of this paper is multi-folds. First, this paper develops and test a novel theoretical model on how relatively weaker manufacturers create tailored strategies to defend their positions in the supply chain. Second, it integrates resource dependence theory and organizational learning theory to propose that relatively weaker manufacturers could use a unique configuration of exploration and exploitation strategies to counteract the dominance of their suppliers and customers. Third, it investigates supply chain power by considering the manufacturers’ upstream and downstream powerful partners together, rather than individually and fourth, it reveals that relationships linking supply chain power to manufacturers’ tailored strategies are contingent on competitive intensity.

This paper aims to explain the effects of national and organizational cultures of boundary spanners on their choices of using three archetype power-based behaviors – dominance, egalitarian and submissive – with supply chain partners. Improved outcomes for global supply chain (GSC) partners are anticipated due to the ways that cultural intelligence affects these culturally guided decisions.

Drawing on multiple streams of literature and focusing on boundary spanners in GSCs, the authors build a conceptual framework that highlights cultural antecedents of predispositions toward power-based behaviors and explains the moderating role of cultural intelligence of boundary spanners on behaviors performed.

The authors propose that boundary spanners’ national and organizational cultural values influence predispositions toward applying and accepting power-based behaviors. They also discuss how cultural intelligence moderates the relationship between culturally determined predispositions and power-based behaviors applied by partners. The cultural intelligence of boundary spanners is argued to have a pivotal role in making power-based decisions, resulting in healthier cross-cultural buyer–supplier relationships.

This paper is the first paper to advance an understanding of the cultural antecedents of boundary spanners’ power-based behaviors that are exercised and interpreted by partners in GSCs. Furthermore, the potential role of cultural intelligence in inter-organizational power dynamics and power-based partner behaviors in supply chains has not previously been discussed.

The cold chain has become an integral part of the supply chain of perishable items. Recent studies have shown a critical absence of a strong and dependable cold chain in developing economies. The purpose of this paper is to set out to identify and inter‐relate the inhibitors that significantly influence the efficiency of a cold chain in developing economies like India.

The synthesis and prioritization of inhibitors are done on the basis of an extensive literature review as well as consultation with academicians and industrial professionals. Using semi‐structured interviews and Fuzzy Interpretive Structure Modeling (FISM) approach, the research presents a hierarchy‐based model.

The end result is a model that establishes the relationships among the identified inhibitors with their respective dominance. The research shows that there exists a group of inhibitors having a high driving power and low dependence with strategic importance and requiring maximum attention and another group includes inhibitors that have high dependence and the consequential actions.

At the time when cold chain is the key domain for the food sector, these findings will be immensely helpful for industry professionals, Government, non‐government, academia and the community in developing strategies and impounding the root causes responsible for the inefficient and weak cold chain in India. The Indian situation echoes to the situation in most of the developing economies and similar solutions can apply there also. These findings will be truly useful for organizations that are planning to operate food chains in developing nations.

Presentation of inhibitors in hierarchy and their classification into driver and dependent categories with their respective dominance on the system is a unique effort in the area of cold chain management. This would help decision makers to better utilize the limited resources.

Africa has the most deaths from infections yet lacks adequate capacity to engage in vaccine development, production and distribution, the cornerstone of efficiently managing and eliminating several infectious diseases. Research has scarcely explored the role of institutional logics in vaccine development, production and distribution, collectively known as end-to-end vaccine manufacturing. This study aims to explore how institutional logics influence firms to engage in the vaccine manufacturing value chain in Africa.

We conducted multiple case study research using five vaccine manufacturing firms from four African countries in three regions. Qualitative interviews were conducted among 18 executives in 5 vaccine manufacturing firms.

We identified that the state, corporate and market institutional logics disparately influence the different parts of the vaccine manufacturing value chain. These institutional logics co-exist in a constellation that also shapes the organizational forms. Their constellation has dominant logics that guide behavior, while subdominant and subordinate logics influence behavior to a limited extent. The findings show that institutional logics are a function of contextual factors, such as historical events, technological changes and pandemics.

The study developed a typology that identifies vaccine manufacturing firm archetypes, institutional logics and their constellations underpinned by contextual factors. The findings have implications for firms and policymakers, as they may guide the end-to-end vaccine manufacturing interventions adapted for their regions.

In today's competitive market subject to various uncertainties, supply chain flexibility (SCF) arose as a potential weapon to enhance the firm's performance. This paper model the effect of SCF on automobile industry performance during sales promotional schemes (SPS), which has turned out to be one of the most important marketing tools.

In view of the literature and the expert opinion taken from an automobile OEM, the SCFs and performance measures pertaining to the SPS environment have been identified. For the purpose of ranking the SCFs with respect to the performance measures, the Interpretive Ranking Process (IRP) has been applied using the direct contact method as a means for establishing the contextual relationships between SCFs and performance measures and to draw the interpreting reasons behind them.

The findings of this study along with the validity and stability of the results assessed through the system graphs and sensitivity analysis demonstrate that flexibility at the procurement end followed by the organizational end has the highest impact on the performance of the company during SPS.

Analysis of SCFs in regard to performance measures during SPS helps improve supply chain performance and offer valuable insights to the practicing managers in decision-making. This study augments the flexibility literature, by clubbing the two independent research streams, SCF and SPS.

This paper aims to explore and gain a better understanding of the relationship between power circumstances and the environmental uncertainty perceived by managers.

This paper conducted a survey of 1,000 manufacturing firms selected randomly from the Top 5000 largest firms in Taiwan. The responding firms were clustered by K‐means into four groups of power circumstances. The paper then applied MANOVA and ANOVA to test the differences among the three types of supply chain uncertainty across the four groups.

The results show that power circumstances are associated with managers' perceptions of environmental uncertainty in terms of demand, technology, and supply. This paper finds that managers of buying firms in dominant positions perceive a lower demand uncertainty while managers facing higher supplier power perceive greater uncertainty in technology. For buying firms under ambiguous power circumstances, their managers tend to perceive higher supply uncertainty. The paper then put forth six power‐based propositions on the basis of their results.

Given that the data are from large‐sized firms, the generalizability of their findings to smaller firms may be limited.

When developing strategies to tackle environmental uncertainties, managers should consider their firm's power circumstances because these tend to influence the managers' interpretation and decisions and thereby their subsequent strategies.

Although environmental uncertainty has been addressed extensively in various management fields, how the environmental uncertainty perceived by a firm's managers is related to the power the firm holds has never been empirically examined. This study clarifies this issue.

Analyzes four entities in a connected supply chain through a case study. Focuses on the relationships between organizations and the specific goals and objectives of each firm. The study was conducted from an insider's view through personal experiences, and a series of on‐site and telephone interviews with managers from each entity of the supply chain. Focuses on passing on and interpreting quality goals, alignment of quality goals and the existence of partnership with the connected supply chain. The main reason for the success of the supply chain is the strength or dominance of the manufacturer. Strong and frequent unidirectional communication exists between the manufacturer and the supplier and between the manufacturer and the distributor. These connections are the crux of the supply chain. From this strong relationship, the supply chain is able to remain successful while communication weakens and disappears at either end of the supply chain.

This research aims to examine which cooperative contract (wholesale-price contract or cost-sharing contract) can more effectively upgrade the green degree of product and promote demand when considering consumer reference price effect under different power structures.

This research investigates a dyadic green supply chain composed of one manufacturer and one retailer. Four Stackelberg game models with a cost-sharing contract or a wholesale-price contract are built in retailer-led and manufacturer-led scenarios, respectively. Using backward induction, the optimal green decision under each model is obtained. In addition, the optimal cooperative contract is proposed by comparing these four models.

It is found that under consumer reference price effect, a cost-sharing contract outperforms a wholesale-price contract in upgrading product greenness and promoting demand. Under any single contract, the retailer-led situation is more conducive to improving product greenness than the manufacturer-led situation. Moreover, consumer reference price effect would reduce the sharing ratio of a cost-sharing contract when the manufacturer dominates, but it could mitigate the problem of double marginalization by reducing wholesale and retail prices under both types of contracts, which would enhance consumer surplus.

It is a new attempt to incorporate consumer reference price effect and power structure into a green supply chain framework and proposes a novel demand function that simultaneously emphasizes consumer reference price effect, consumer environmental awareness and product green attribute. In addition, it provides managerial insights for business managers to choose green cooperative contracts with consumer reference price effect under different power structures.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.