Stock Market Reaction to A Buyer’s Supply Chain Sustainability Management: An event study examining the consequence to buyers and their suppliers

In response to increasing stakeholder pressure on firms to improve environmental and social performance, firms increasingly adopt supply chain sustainability management (SCSM) that place new requirements on their suppliers. This research explores how SCSM from a firm (i.e., a buyer) influence their own and their suppliers’ financial performance using objective measures. The difference in the magnitude of the impact of SCSM on these two levels of the supply chain is explored. Factors that influence the impact of SCSM on financial performance are investigated for both buyers and their suppliers, focusing on the nature of SCSM and firm-level characteristics. Event study methodology was used to measure the financial performance of buyers and suppliers by estimating the abnormal stock returns in response to buyers’ SCSM announcements made between 1990 and 2016. In the buyer analysis, 308 announcements of buyers’ SCSM were used. In the supplier analysis, a ‘related firms’ design was used by matching the suppliers to their paired buyers, to give a sample of 2189 supplier observations derived from 219 buyers’ SCSM announcements. A cross-sectional regression analysis was used to test the effects of the factors on financial performance for each of the buyer and supplier observations in the samples. A paired sample t-test using the observations paired from the same announcements was used to investigate the different impact of SCSM on buyers and suppliers. The impact of SCSM on both buyers’ and suppliers’ financial performance is statistically significant and negative and is more negative for suppliers. Three factors influence buyers’ financial performance change in response to SCSM adoption. Less negative financial performance was found when several buyers jointly develop and mandate SCSM on their suppliers using a ‘group SCSM’ approach or when they emphasize the social dimension of SCSM (e.g., labor rights). However, buyers with high growth prospects suffer more negative financial performance. Five factors influence suppliers’ financial performance change in response to SCSM compliance. The suppliers that have a high level of buyers’ dependence and high inventory slack have less negative financial performance when they are required to comply with their buyers’ SCSM. However, group SCSM approach used by buyers and a long-term relationship with buyers increase suppliers’ negative financial performance. A high level of financial slack and dependence on buyers interactively create more negative financial performance. There are two main research implications. While the impact of SCSM in a supply chain context (in dyadic relationships) suggests all parties are worse off, a buyer can shift the burden of SCSM to its suppliers as shown by the greater magnitude of negative financial performance for the supplier than the buyer. There are factors that both buyers and suppliers can consider and control to balance sustainability with financial performance through a buffer or benefit, when SCSM is being adopted. The magnitude of the expected negative financial performance suggests challenges in SCSM adoption for managers, particularly the shift of risks and costs to suppliers. Managers may deal with business risks relating to SCSM based on the influential factors proposed by this research to buffer against the negative impacts. The negative financial performance over the supply chain suggests that the long-term prospects for SCSM are fragile. Policy implications include additional societal support (e.g., tax support) for the firms adopting SCSM

The role of inter-organisational knowledge management in the UEA's public policing sector

Inter-organisational knowledge sharing between airport security organisations has become increasingly vital to maintain the highest standards of security and public safety. Social networks are considered a significant space for knowledge sharing within and across organisations. The purpose of this research is to investigate inter-organisational knowledge sharing in social media between key organisations in policing and airport security. A cross-sectional case study strategy combining qualitative and quantitative methods was employed to investigate the use of social media in inter-organisational knowledge sharing in the context of airport security in the UAE. Findings showed that the structural characteristics within knowledge sharing were highly centralised and polarised with low intensity in knowledge sharing. Social capital was constrained at a relational level due to cultural factors of trust, risk aversion and power distance that influenced a closed culture and reduced the scope for tacit knowledge sharing practices as well as low level cognitive capital. Analysis of dimensions of the SECI model for knowledge creation revealed that knowledge and the process of knowing was impacted by cultural distinctions that constrained socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation processes. The key barriers to knowledge sharing were identified and associated with trust, risk aversion, organisational culture, resource constraints and interoperability factors. This study makes a contribution to theory and practice in terms of the relationship between social capital dimensions and knowledge creation processes and the characteristics of knowledge-sharing within social media. The study further adds to knowledge on the antecedents of inter-organisational knowledge sharing, particularly in the Arabic context.UAE Government and Ministry of Interio

Plataforma para suporte ao ciclo de vida de organizações virtuais e seleção dinâmica de parceiros e fornecedores

Tese de Doutoramento em Engenharia Industrial e de SistemasAs empresas enfrentam atualmente desafios crescentes motivados pela globalização. Por um lado, veêm crescer o número de concorrentes com os quais terão que competir para manterem a sua quota de mercado, e com quem terão que lidar no contexto de qualquer estratégia de crescimento. Por outro lado, encontram um conjunto alargado de oportunidades de entrada em novos mercados e de potencial aumento de penetração nos mercados em que operam, devido à crescente mitigação de barreiras geográficas, políticas e económicas. As estratégias de diversificação de mercados criam nas empresas a motivação para produzir novos produtos e disponibilizar novos serviços aos seus clientes. Adicionalmente, as estratégias de desenvolvimento de mercado assentes na conquista de clientes em novos segmentos geográficos e demográficos, ou na conquista de clientes potenciais nos segmentos existentes, podem ser suportadas por uma maior diversificação de produtos e maior agilidade ao nível do negócio. A diversificação de produtos e o aumento da agilidade dos processos requerem das empresas a posse de um leque cada vez mais amplo de competências de produção, logísticas, comerciais e de gestão. As pequenas e médias empresas têm cada vez maiores dificuldades em dispor deste leque de competências, de forma integral, na sua estrutura interna, pelo que promovem a criação de relações mais próximas com seus parceiros de negócio e fornecedores, que as complementam. As redes colaborativas são uma importante ferramenta para apoiar as empresas neste processo. Das redes colaborativas de fornecimento até às empresas ágeis virtuais são várias as opções disponíveis para as empresas otimizarem a sua relação com os seus fornecedores e parceiros. Para as implementar, de forma eficiente, as empresas necessitam de ferramentas tecnológicas que lhes permitam identificar, avaliar e selecionar os melhores parceiros e fornecedores num contexto de negócio dinâmico, em mudança constante. Nesta tese de doutoramento é proposta uma plataforma, baseada em agentes de software, para suportar o ciclo de vida das redes colaborativas e organizações virtuais, bem como uma abordagem dinâmica de avaliação de parceiros e fornecedores, que pode apoiar as empresas na otimização das suas relações com os parceiros de negócio.Companies are facing growing challenges motivated by globalization. A globalized market means that the number of companies with which they will need to compete to maintain or enlarge their market share is increased. Additionally, it also brings greater opportunities to conquer new markets and increase existing market shares, since the geographical, political and economical boundaries are gradually being removed. Strategies of market diversification push companies to provide novel products and services to customers, belonging to new geographic and demographic segments. Additionally, market development strategies targeting non-buying customers in selected segments or new buyers in new segments may be paired with increased product diversification and improved business agility. To fulfil the requirements associated with manufacturing a wider range of products and increased agility at process level implies having a wider set of competences available. Small and Medium (SME) companies find it increasingly difficult to have all the required competences in their internal structures; therefore, they need to rely on strategic business partnerships and suppliers to be successful. Collaborative networks are an important tool to assist companies creating and improving their business partnerships. From collaborative supply chains to agile virtual enterprises, companies have several options at their disposal to optimize their relations with business partners and suppliers. When a company decides to develop such a network, it needs decision support tools to select the best partners or suppliers, particularly in today’s spatial-temporal changeable global environments. In this doctoral thesis, a platform based on software agents is proposed, to support the lifecycle of collaborative networks and virtual organizations, along with a dynamic decision approach for supplier and business partner evaluation and selection, which can prove valuable to enable companies to establish strong collaborative business networks

Safety and Reliability - Safe Societies in a Changing World

The contributions cover a wide range of methodologies and application areas for safety and reliability that contribute to safe societies in a changing world. These methodologies and applications include: - foundations of risk and reliability assessment and management - mathematical methods in reliability and safety - risk assessment - risk management - system reliability - uncertainty analysis - digitalization and big data - prognostics and system health management - occupational safety - accident and incident modeling - maintenance modeling and applications - simulation for safety and reliability analysis - dynamic risk and barrier management - organizational factors and safety culture - human factors and human reliability - resilience engineering - structural reliability - natural hazards - security - economic analysis in risk managemen

An Ontology-Based Collaborative Interorganizational Knowledge Management Network (Cik-Net)

Knowledge is recognized as one of the most important and valuable management assets because knowledge enables organizations to utilize and develop resources, enhance their competitiveness and develop sustainable competitive advantage. A number of knowledge management approaches have been developed with the purpose of managing organizational knowledge. However, these approaches only focus on managing intra-organizational knowledge which is inadequate in the current business environment because users are often required to access inter-organizational knowledge from other knowledge sources in order to complete their tasks. Furthermore, these approaches also fail to collaborate with each other due to the fact that their designs are based on their own business and knowledge management requirement in managing organizational knowledge. These non-collaborative knowledge management approaches create independent “knowledge islands”. In this paper, ontology and its mediation methods are proposed to overcome the limitation of “knowledge islands” so that organizations are able to reuse the retrieved inter-organizational knowledge in supporting organizational knowledge management process. To allow knowledge management systems of various organizations to collaborate, we propose to develop an ontology-based Collaborative Interorganizational knowledge management Network. The proposed network is designed to provide a platform for organizations to access and retrieve inter-organizational knowledge of common domain

The appraisal of Facebook online community: An exposition of mobile commerce in social media reviews

Peer reviewe

SOCIAL SCIENCES POSTGRADUATE INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR (SSPIS) 2017

The objectives of this seminar are: To provide an avenue for postgraduate students to present their research findings, impart knowledge and get feedback; To promote interactions among participants; To enhance networking among researchers; and To assist postgraduate students with publication opportunities