The COVID‐19 pandemic has created significant disruptions in both demand and supply. Our study makes use of such dramatic changes in demand and supply during the pandemic to examine resource ...dependence and power balancing/unbalancing issues in buyer–supplier relationships. Specifically, we investigate the effect of customer and supplier concentrations on firm resilience during the pandemic. Drawing on resource‐dependence theory (RDT), we theorize that shifts in demand and supply in different pandemic stages influence the effect of customer and supplier concentrations on firm resilience by altering the power dynamics between focal firms and their concentrated customers and suppliers. Central to our theorizing is that the worsening power imbalance is more detrimental. Measuring firm resilience by loss and recovery (i.e., change) in productivity, our analysis of 23,440 Chinese listed firms' quarter observations from 2019 to 2020 shows that customer concentration is negatively related to firm resilience in the disruption stage but has no effect in the restoration stage. Supplier concentration is positively related to firm resilience in the disruption stage but undermines firm resilience in the restoration stage. These findings largely confirm our theoretical propositions. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications.
Highlights
Customer and supplier concentrations are important supply chain characteristics that influence firm resilience during a crisis. Their effects are different across different stages of the pandemic.
Customer and supplier concentrations become more detrimental when power imbalance is worsened; thus, firms should try to balance the power relationships with their concentrated customers and suppliers in order to benefit more from customer and supplier concentrations.
Firms should be aware that the macro demand and supply shifts induced by a crisis may change the resource dependence and power dynamics in buyer–supplier relationships, which in turn affect the efficacy of resilience strategies.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Previous studies on the impact of customer concentration on firm-level outcomes mainly focus on financial and operational variables, and the influence of a concentrated customer base remains ...controversial. As one of the important issues of responsible and sustainable operations management, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has garnered increasing attention of scholars in recent years. However, research on CSR antecedents is far less than the studies of its outcomes, and few studies investigate what determines CSR engagement from buyer-supplier relationship perspective. Using a large sample panel data from Chinese publicly listed firms between 2010 and 2019, we find that a concentrated customer base is negatively associated with suppliers' CSR performance. Our results still hold after a series of robustness checks. Next, the results show that customer concentration is also negatively correlated with CSR's five dimensions, but the negative impact on non-core stakeholders is more significant than that on core stakeholders. Further, the mechanism analysis reveals that profitability and financial constraints are two potential transmission mechanisms in the linkage between customer concentration and CSR performance. Finally, we find that the negative impact is more salient when a supplier with higher transparency. Overall, our study suggests that a close relationship between a supplier and its major customers may impede the supplier's incentives to do good things, and a supplier may weigh benefits and costs to strategically adjust its CSR behaviour as a response to customer risk. These findings have significant implications for suppliers, customers, and regulators.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
This study investigates the unique and complementary effects of manufacturing technologies and lean practices on operational performance of manufacturing firms. Despite the importance of ...understanding how various resources are interrelated within firms, there have been few studies focusing on this area. Using data collected from 186 manufacturing plants in Thailand, we found that both manufacturing technologies and lean practices have unique effects on a range of operational performance dimensions, including quality, lead-time, flexibility, and cost. More importantly, however, we also found that both organizational resources have complementary (or synergistic) effects on those operational performance dimensions. Based on the research findings, we offer theoretical and practical insights which support the importance of building strong manufacturing technologies and lean practices that maximize operational performance.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
This paper presents an empirical study on the multidimensional relationships between supplier management practices and firm operational performance. Specifically, we focus on three supplier ...management practices, namely strategic long-term relationship, supplier assessment, and logistics integration, and test their effects on four operations performance measures, namely quality, delivery, flexibility, and cost. We use data collected from 232 manufacturing firms in Australia to conduct the study. Ten hypotheses were tested simultaneously using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique. The results show that different supplier management practices have different unique effects on different operations performance measures. Supplier assessment has a positive relationship with quality performance. Both strategic long-term relationship and logistics integration have positive relationships with delivery, flexibility, and cost performance. From a theoretical perspective, this study demonstrates the relative contributions of different kinds of resources (i.e., supplier management practices in our case) to different performance measures. Our research findings provide practical insights for managers to understand the effectiveness, as well as the limitations, of different supplier management practices in enhancing different operations performance measures of firms.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Taking an operational perspective on the relations between employee loyalty and business performance, we examine the relationships among employee loyalty, service quality, customer satisfaction, ...customer loyalty and firm profitability, and the contextual factors influencing these relationships. We developed a research model grounded in the service-profit chain notion of
Heskett et al. (1994) and empirically tested the model by conducting a survey of 210 high-contact service shops in Hong Kong. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we observed that employee loyalty is significantly related to service quality, which in turn impacts customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, ultimately leading to firm profitability in high-contact service industries. Using multiple-group analysis of SEM, we found that the effect of employee loyalty on firm profitability through service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is robust under different scenarios of employee–customer contact level, market competitiveness, and switching cost in the sampled shops. This finding supports the generalizability of the observed relationships in various operating contexts.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Researchers in supply chain management have found over the past two decades that supply management should be not merely a purchasing function but a strategic tool for supply chain integration. Supply ...management, the cornerstone of the integration of industrial supply chains, has evolved as a key research area. Based on quantitative and qualitative investigations of 225 electronics manufacturing firms, we examine the organizational impacts of strategic supply management (SSM) and the contexts of company size, process type, ISO 9000 certification, and quality management (QM) implementation that facilitate such an endeavor. We reveal that SSM is essentially a quality management initiative that requires bilateral efforts for continuous improvement and thus is not associated with the basic requirements of ISO 9000. We find that SSM improves on-time shipments, reduces operational costs, and leads to customer satisfaction and improved business performance. Developed based on contemporary premises in supply chain and QM, this research refines our understanding of the relationships among quality initiatives, SSM, and organizational performance.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Multinational corporations have benefited tremendously from free trade in the past few decades. However, the dynamism of international relations, paired with the global recession, has rekindled the ...debate over frictionless trade. In this study, we examine how trade friction, created by tariff trade barriers, affects the operational performance of domestic firms which source from the affected countries. We also investigate how various supply chain characteristics and strategies can moderate the impact of such trade friction. Motivated by the 2018 U.S.–China trade war, we conducted a difference‐in‐difference analysis to examine the impact of trade tariffs on performance indicators of U.S. firms with direct supplier connections in China. Specifically, we found that U.S. firms with direct supply partners (i.e., first‐tier suppliers) in China had a worse performance than the U.S. firms without direct supply partners in China in terms of inventory (i.e., days of supply) and profitability (return‐on‐assets). We further found that the negative impacts were more severe for firms with a higher degree of outsourcing, and horizontal and spatial supply base complexity. We discuss the implications for international operations management, supply chain networks, supply risk management, and provide suggestions to supply chain practitioners and trade policymakers.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Today, manufacturing firms encounter pressure from multiple stakeholders to manage occupational health and safety issues properly, systematically and transparently. While manufacturing firms commonly ...use internally developed Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, there is growing pressure to adopt externally certified system such as OHSAS 18001. However, there are conflicting views and little empirical evidence that examines the linkage between OHSAS 18001 certification and operating performance. Hence, this paper examines the impact of OHSAS 18001 on operational performance through three theoretical lenses: Institutional Theory, Normal Accident Theory, and High Reliability Theory. We also investigate how complexity and coupling moderate the relationship between OHSAS 18001 and operational performance. Based on a sample of 211 U.S. listed manufacturing firms with OHSAS 18001 certification, we find that certification leads to significant increases in abnormal performance on safety, sales growth, labor productivity, and profitability and that these benefits increase as complexity and coupling increase.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Industry 4.0, a collection of emerging intelligent and digital technologies, has been the main interest of both researchers and practitioners in operations management (OM) in recent years. Despite ...its proclaimed effectiveness in supply chain (SC) management, empirical studies examining the effects of Industry 4.0 adoption on SC resilience have been underrepresented in the current OM literature. In our study, we explore the effects of 16 Industry 4.0 technologies and IT advancement concerning SC resilience through the mediating roles of SC capabilities with respect to SC collaboration and SC visibility. Following the dynamic resource-based view (RBV), we regard Industry 4.0 adoption and IT advancement as two important IT resources with heterogeneity, SC collaboration and SC visibility as essential SC dynamic capabilities, and SC resilience as competitive advantages. We suggest the combination and evolution of IT resources and dynamic SC capabilities helps firms obtain the competitive advantage regarding SC resilience. Using data from a survey of 408 Chinese manufacturing firms, we reveal Industry 4.0 adoption is positively related to IT advancement and that Industry 4.0 has a nonsignificant impact on SC capabilities, whereas IT advancement has a positive impact on SC capabilities. Additionally, both SC collaboration and visibility positively influence SC resilience and significantly mediate the impacts of Industry 4.0 and IT advancement on SC resilience. Our study offers an enhanced understanding of the specific flows between Industry 4.0 and SC resilience and provides nuanced insights for both literature and practice.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
PurposeIn this research, we examine the impact of ISO 14001, an international environmental management accreditation, on the long-term financial risk and sales growth of ...firms.Design/methodology/approachWe employ a quasi-experimental design and construct 682 treated and control firms that are matched using propensity score matching. We then test our hypotheses using the difference in difference model.FindingsWe find that, although ISO 14001 leads to lower financial risk, standard management systems such as ISO 14001 actually hinder the sales growth of firms, an unanticipated outcome. In particular, this trade-off worsens over time, becoming particularly more severe among firms that adopt ISO 14001 early and operate in less-polluting industries.Research limitations/implicationsWe present a hidden side of environmental accreditations, indicating a potential trade-off in the long-term efficacy of environmental standard management systems.Practical implicationsFirms must be cautious about adopting environmental management systems. Over time, a focus on environmental certification could potentially hinder firms' long-term growth. Firms should also be aware of certification timing and levels of industry pollution to resolve the tension in the trade-off.Originality/valueThis research is one of the first studies demonstrating that environmental accreditations result in a trade-off between reducing financial risk and improving sales growth.
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