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The purpose of this paper is to build and test theory regarding how rivalry in environmental management (EM) affects a focal firm’s environmental image and financial performance.

The theory is tested with an original panel data set of 2,776 focal-rival dyad pairs. Measures of environmental signals are developed from content analysis of corporate sustainability reports. Environmental performance data are drawn from the Newsweek US 500 Green Rankings database. Financial performance data are drawn from COMPUSTAT.

The main findings are that focal firm signals have a positive and significant impact on both focal firm environmental image and financial performance. Rival firm signals have a negative effect on focal firm environmental image. Surprisingly, rival firm signals have a positive impact on focal firm financial performance.

This paper can serve as a testament to the value of monitoring rival firm strategies and signaling to counter the impact of rival signals in the environmental domain. Environmental practices can be a source of competitive advantage for firms, and failure to compete in this space can place the firm at a competitive disadvantage.

This study makes several contributions to the EM literature. Leveraging competitive dynamics and the institutional viewpoints, this study builds theory with regard to how signals of competitive EM activity among a focal firm and its rivals affect environmental image and financial performance.

Content analysis is a methodology that has been used in many academic disciplines as a means to extract quantitative measures from textual information. The purpose of this paper is to document the use of content analysis in the supply chain literature. The authors also discuss opportunities for future research.

The authors conduct a literature review of 13 leading supply chain journals to assess the state of the content analysis-based literature and identify opportunities for future research. Additionally, the authors provide a general schema for and illustration of the use of content analysis.

The findings suggest that content analysis for quantitative studies and hypothesis testing purposes has rarely been used in the supply chain discipline. The research also suggests that in order to fully realize the potential of content analysis, future content analysis research should conduct more hypothesis testing, employ diverse data sets, utilize state-of-the-art content analysis software programs, and leverage multi-method research designs.

The current research synthesizes the use of content analysis methods in the supply chain domain and promotes the need to capitalize on the advantages offered by this research methodology. The paper also presents several topics for future research that can benefit from the content analysis method.

This study aims to examine the extent to which a buying firm can leverage the firm's supplier's innovations to boost the firm's own innovation performance and key moderators to this relationship. Grounded in social embeddedness theory, the authors explore the role of dyadic embeddedness between a buyer and supplier as a facilitator of buyer innovation.

Negative binomial regression was used to empirically analyze a large sample of dyadic observations from the USA manufacturing industry. Measures were developed from data acquired from Compustat, LexisNexis and Bloomberg.

The findings indicate that supplier innovation has a positive impact on a buyer firm's innovation output, particularly when the firms are technically similar and when there is a higher degree of financial interdependence in the buyer–supplier dyad.

This study provides important insights into how supplier firms can facilitate buyer innovation as and how relational factors suggested by social embeddedness theory act to strengthen this effect. Through a theoretical-based empirical examination of supply chain dyads, the findings highlight the importance of financial interdependence and technical similarity when buyers seek to benefit from supplier innovation capabilities.

EC-Creamery is an Eau Claire, WI based dairy processor selling yogurt products throughout the Midwest region of the U.S. Inaccurate forecasts have wreaked havoc in the company, leading to frequent stockouts and creating operational challenges. Your task is to draw on the information you obtain from your colleagues to develop sales forecasts, document your choices and procedures and share your thoughts and insights on issues related to forecasting and sales & operations planning.

Few industries may be better suited to study the effects of financial distress on managerial decision making than the airline industry. Economic recessions, natural catastrophes, and terrorist attacks are just some of the factors that frequently take a particularly heavy toll on the airline industry. Thus, coping with and overcoming financial distress is a critical aspect of airline management.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt and contribute to the further development of the relational view by examining the drivers of retailer-supplier collaboration and its effect on the performance of both the retailer and the supplier.

The paper draws its conclusions from a structural analysis of dyadic survey data collected from consumer packaged goods suppliers and retailers in Brazil. In addition, objective retailer performance measures (retailer in-stock performance) are included in the data set.

The results indicate that a supplier's customer orientation is an important determinant of supplier relationship-specific investments and, ultimately, supply chain collaboration. The empirical results also indicate that retailers stand to benefit the most from a supplier's collaborative efforts. In addition, there is evidence that a supplier's customer orientation is positively related to its own performance.

The limited sample size – a result of the dyadic nature of the data – constitutes a limitation and, at the same time, presents opportunities for future, larger-scale studies. Nonetheless, this study highlights the value of customer orientation and collaboration in terms of driving performance outcomes for both suppliers and buyers, while invoking the notion that the benefits of supply chain collaboration accrue differentially over time from the retailers’ and suppliers’ perspectives.

While many of the relationships set forth in this research have been implicitly assumed by proponents of the relational view, this study furthers the development of the relational view by explicitly modeling supplier relationship-specific investments and customer orientation as antecedents of collaboration. Moreover, the study contributes to the literature on buyer-supplier collaboration by simultaneously exploring to what extent both suppliers and retailers derive benefits from such collaboration.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the current state of implementation of lean production practices in China as compared to the USA. Moreover, an institutional‐theoretic framework is developed that explores the interplay among economic, socio‐cultural and regulative forces that may shape the adoption process of lean production practices in China.

The paper draws its conclusions from an analysis of survey data from samples of Chinese and US manufacturing executives. Lean production implementation is measured via a survey instrument, and the data are analyzed via regression analysis.

The results suggest that the degree of implementation of lean production in China is equal to, if not greater than lean production implementation in the USA. While the results are fairly consistent across industries, they vary across different lean production practice bundles. In light of these findings, an institutional theory perspective is adopted to develop further insight into the potential drivers of and barriers to lean production implementation in China. It is argued that, while several economic factors function as enablers for the implementation of these practices, various social processes and cultural traits in China still hinder the full adoption of lean production.

Larger‐scale empirical studies are required for further hypothesis testing and enhanced validity. In particular, the explicit measurement of institutional forces and the statistical analysis of their effects on lean production adoption are recommended for future research.

This is the first study to systematically compare the adoption of lean practices in China and the USA. The analyses and discussions provide a basis for further theory building and hypothesis testing research. In addition, the insights offered in this study may help firms gain a better understanding of the unique opportunities and challenges associated with adoption of lean production in China.

The purpose of this paper is to: first, provide a systematic review of the drivers of retail on-shelf availability (OSA) that have been scrutinized in the literature; second, identify areas where further scrutiny is needed; and third, critically reflect on current conceptualizations of OSA and suggest alternative perspectives that may help guide future investigations.

A systematic approach is adopted wherein nine leading journals in logistics, supply chain management, operations management, and retailing are systematically scanned for articles discussing OSA drivers. The respective journals’ websites are used as the primary platform for scanning, with Google Scholar serving as a secondary platform for completeness. Journal articles are carefully read and their respective relevance assessed. A final set of 73 articles is retained and thoroughly reviewed for the purpose of this research. The systematic nature of the review minimizes researcher bias, ensures reasonable completeness, maximizes reliability, and enables replicability.

Five categories of drivers of OSA are identified. The first four – i.e., operational, behavioral, managerial, and coordination drivers – stem from failures at the planning or execution stages of retail operations. The fifth category – systemic drivers – encompasses contingency factors that amplify the effect of supply chain failures on OSA. The review also indicates that most non-systemic OOS could be traced back to incentive misalignments within and across supply chain partners.

This research consolidates past findings on the drivers of OSA and provides valuable insights as to areas where further research may be needed. It also offers forward-looking perspectives that could help advance research on the drivers of OSA. For example, the authors invite the research community to revisit the pervasive underlying assumption that OSA is an absolute imperative and question the unidirectional relationship that higher OSA is necessarily better. The authors initiate an open dialogue to approach OSA as a service-level parameter, rather than a maximizable outcome, as indicated by inventory theory.