AbstractSocial media have been increasingly adopted for organizational purposes but their operational implications are not well understood. Firms’ social media initiatives might facilitate information flow and knowledge sharing within and across organizations, strengthening firm‐customer interaction, and improving internal and external collaboration. In this research we empirically examine the impact of social media initiatives on firms’ operational efficiency and innovativeness. Taking the resource‐based view of firms’ information capability, we consider firms’ social media initiatives as strategic resources for operational improvement. We posit that firms’ social media initiatives enhance dynamic knowledge‐sharing routines through an information‐rich social network, leading to both operational efficiency and innovativeness. Collecting secondary data in a longitudinal setting from multiple sources, we construct dynamic panel data (DPD) models. Based on system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation, we show that firms’ social media initiatives improve operational efficiency and innovativeness. We identify the importance of an information‐rich social network to the creation of knowledge‐based advantage through firms’ social media initiatives, and discuss the theoretical and managerial implications from the perspective of operations management.

AbstractIn contemporary business environments, the ability to manage operational knowledge is an important predictor of organizational competitiveness. Organizations invest large sums in various types of information technologies (ITs) to manage operational knowledge. Because of their superior storage, processing and communication capabilities, ITs offer technical platforms to build knowledge management (KM) capabilities. However, merely acquiring ITs are not sufficient, and organizations must structure information system (IS) designs to leverage ITs for building KM capabilities. We study how technical and strategic IS designs enhance operational absorptive capacity (OAC) – the KM capability of an operations management (OM) department. Specifically, we use a capabilities perspective of absorptive capacity to examine potential absorptive capacity (POAC) and realized absorptive capacity (ROAC) capabilities – the two OAC capabilities that create and utilize knowledge, respectively. Our theory proposes that integrated IS capability, – an aspect of technical IS design – is an antecedent of POAC and ROAC capabilities, and business‐IT alignment – an aspect of strategic IS design – moderates the relationship between integrated IS capability and ROAC capability. Combining data gleaned from a multi‐respondent survey with archival data from COMPUSTAT, we test our hypotheses using a dataset from 153 manufacturing organizations. By proposing that IS design enables an OM department's KM processes, i.e., the POAC and ROAC capabilities, our interdisciplinary theoretical framework opens the “black box” of OAC and contributes to improved understanding of IS and OM synergies. We offer a detailed discussion of our contributions to the literature at the IS‐OM interface and implications for practitioners.

AbstractEffective supply chain practice and information sharing enhances the current supply chain management environment. The purpose of this study is to investigate the integration of information sharing and supply chain practice in supply chain management. Data from 125 North American manufacturing firms were collected. The results show that (1) effective information sharing significantly enhances effective supply chain practice; (2) supply chain dynamism has significant positive influence on effective information sharing as well as effective supply chain practice. Supply chain dynamism has more influence on information sharing than supply chain practice; (3) and effective supply chain practice becomes more important when the level of information sharing increases. The findings show that both effective information sharing and effective supply chain practice are critical in achieving good supply chain performance.

AbstractResearch on supplier satisfaction in buyer–supplier relationships has been primarily conceptual. One purpose of the research described in this paper is to empirically test the influences of supply chain power on supplier satisfaction. Exploration of the effects of power on factors of supplier satisfaction will provide the key to understanding the power‐satisfaction link in supply chain relationships. This paper shows how the buyer–seller relationship affects supplier satisfaction. In doing so, previous satisfaction and power literature is pulled together to demonstrate that the power‐satisfaction variable must be included in any examination of supply chain partnerships. The three primary objectives of this research are to establish how the different “bases of power” affect the satisfaction of selling firms, investigate how power driven relationships affect supplier satisfaction, and measure the effect of power influences on supplier satisfaction in the automobile industry. Each of these research objectives was achieved. This study establishes the first empirical evidence for the measurement of power‐driven supplier satisfaction. In each of the nine models studied, the power‐affected buyer–supplier relationship was found to have a significant positive effect on both performance and satisfaction. The paths between performance and satisfaction, however, were consistently found to be non‐significant.

AbstractSeveral reputable industry sources have recognized that many organizations fail to realize the financial benefits sought with outsourcing. Further, prior research has found that outsourcing organizations struggle to estimate accurately the so called “hidden costs” associated with managing these inter‐organizational relationships. This is especially true of complex, globally distributed outsourced services. In this study, we use dyadic data on 102 outsourcing relationships to investigate how dimensions of task‐ and location‐specific complexity influence the degree of control and coordination costs incurred by the customer organization. Results from our hierarchical regression analysis demonstrate that the scale of the service and the geographic distance between the customer and provider locations are associated with higher levels of both control and coordination costs. Task breadth and geographic dispersion are significantly associated with increased control costs, but not coordination costs. Counter to our expectations, control costs decrease with the degree of service customization, whereas both control and coordination costs are negatively related to the average cultural distance between provider and customer organizations. These findings contribute unique empirical evidence to the outsourcing, offshoring, and international service operations literature.

AbstractService provider opportunism is widely noted as a principal risk with outsourcing. Indeed, economic theory regarding the factors which influence the outsourcing decision, treats opportunism as a core behavioral assumption. It is assumed that if given the opportunity, outsourcing providers will act in a self‐serving manner despite the potentially negative impact it may have on their customer. Other researchers have suggested that opportunism is not an unwavering human behavior, but rather can be substantively influenced by the management practices which define the relationship. Building on these arguments, this study investigates the validity of these divergent positions. Hierarchical linear regression is used to examine dyadic data on 102 information technology, logistics, and other business process outsourcing relationships. We test a model which hypothesizes that the buying firm's reliance on different bases of inter‐firm power will have differing effects on the risk of opportunism (shirking and poaching). These hypotheses are evaluated while concurrently examining the influence of exchange hazards (relationship‐specific investments and technological uncertainty) on provider shirking and poaching. The results offer strong evidence that buyer reliance on mediated forms of power (i.e. rewards, coercive, legal legitimate) enhance the risk of both provider shirking and poaching, while non‐mediated power (i.e. expert, referent) is associated with a diminished level of opportunistic behavior. Interestingly, relationship‐specific investments have a significant effect on some forms of opportunistic behavior but not on other forms of opportunistic behavior. Technological uncertainty did not have a significant impact on provider opportunism.

AbstractSupplier involvement is essential to a new venture seeking to develop a radical innovation. Despite this, prior literature has not adequately addressed supplier involvement in radical innovation, nor what the antecedents to increased supplier involvement are. We build and test a conceptual model of the antecedents and new product performance outcomes of supplier involvement in the development of radical innovation by new ventures. Antecedent variables (supplier's specific investments and the new venture's qualification of the supplier's abilities) are drawn from the transaction cost analysis literature. We include new venture's relative power and new venture's level of commitment to the supplier as contingency conditions. We develop a set of hypotheses relating supplier involvement to radical innovation performance, relating the antecedent variables to supplier involvement, and also testing the interaction effects of the two contingency conditions. We gather data from both new ventures and their major suppliers for 173 recent radical innovation projects, and use hierarchical regression analysis to test our hypotheses. We find that the contingency conditions moderate achieved levels of supplier involvement, and also find a direct relationship between achieved level of involvement and performance. We conclude with theoretical contributions and managerial implications.

Abstract Numerous studies on corporate social responsibility (CSR) indicate that firms adopt CSR practices for various reasons related to their supply chain. However, the necessity to conform to a firm's own industry CSR norm is overlooked. Conforming to one's industry CSR norm—a herding behavior known as CSR conformity —ensures firm in‐group legitimacy and preserves internal resources for core business activities. On the other hand, deviating from industry norms sets a firm apart from its peers, making the firm more appealing to supply chain partners. Motivated by this dilemma, this study draws on middle‐status conformity theory and explores how a firm's network prominence determines its CSR conformity. Panel data analyses of 1650 firm‐year observations reveal an inverse U‐shaped relationship between firm network prominence and its CSR conformity, indicating that firms with a mid‐level network prominence engage in higher CSR conformity. However, the inverse U is flattened when a firm's supply chain partners (and their respective industries) share similar CSR standards, suggesting that a firm can only prioritize its own industry CSR norms if its supply chain partners share a compatible CSR standard. These findings highlight the importance of understanding CSR from an organizational conformity perspective, especially in the context of supply chain network.

AbstractWillingness to pay (WTP) is known to be lower for remanufactured products than for comparable new products. Normative work to date has assumed that a consumer's WTP for a remanufactured product is a fraction, called discount factor, of the consumer's WTP for a corresponding new product, and that this discount factor is constant across consumers. Recent empirical research demonstrates, however, that the discount factor is not constant across consumers. This discovery has led researchers to call for an exploration of more refined utility models that incorporate heterogeneous risk preferences through elements such as risk aversion, loss aversion, and ambiguity aversion. To address this call, this article assesses each of these risk preference elements by empirically deriving WTP distributions from two interlinked studies. To provide triangulation in both the empirical method and sample, the interlinked studies employ an online survey and a laboratory experiment that elicits WTP for framed lotteries that proxy the situation of buying remanufactured products. The empirical results and robustness verifications demonstrate that a parsimonious standard utility model incorporating only risk aversion explains the WTP data reasonably well.