An Exploration of Supplier Decision-Making under Threat

Purpose: The use of threats to force supplier compliance is a common practice in current business affairs. Unfortunately, little is known regarding the supplier’s decision process to comply to or resist such a coercive strategy. The paper aims to develop a more comprehensive view of the decision process used by suppliers when threatened by their customers, as well as discover new phenomena regarding supplier Decision-Making Under Threat (DUT). More specifically, it aims at (1) gaining a better understanding of threats by looking at their patterns and commonalities and (2) identifying which consideration factors are relevant when suppliers evaluate threats. Method: To identify which consideration factors are relevant to suppliers when deciding how to react to threats, the study employed an exploratory approach by interviewing 17 marketing practitioners with experiences in DUT. The in-depth interviews lasted between thirty-five and sixty-five minutes and were transcribed. Descriptive coding and template analysis generated thirty-nine descriptors and nine categories that are deemed important when considering DUT. The authors also evaluated the intensity of each of the consideration factors present in the decision process. Findings: The results reveal that it is possible to categorize threats into three components: Objectives, Penalties and Manifestations. Objectives are what the customer is trying to achieve by using the threat, namely demanding price reductions, appropriating intellectual property, procuring financial statements, receiving a bribe, increasing technical requirements, accessing a cost breakdown, modifying delivery terms, and modifying payment terms. The penalty is what the supplier can expect to happen when refusing to comply, such as losing the customer’s sales. Finally, manifestations describe how the threat is presented by the customer. Study results show that these manifestations may be categorized according to their level of ambiguity, predictability, and candor. The results also reveal that at least five cognitive decision criteria are typically considered during the decision process although at different intensity levels from each participant. These criteria include: Dependence, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Relationship Quality, Relational Norm Violations, and Mimetic Isomorphism. Several interesting discoveries were made. For example, Dependence is both the consideration factor for which most people emphasized its influence on their decision and for which most people said that it had no influence at all. Relational norm violations is unique by being the only criterion for which no participant mentioned that it does not influence their decision. The overwhelming majority of study participants considered more than three criteria during the DUT process. Finally, participants said that they experienced negative emotions such as anger and frustration when exposed to threats albeit most did not recognize that it played a role in their decision. These emotions are however believed to be a factor in reducing the supplier’s willingness to comply. Overall, the study finds that DUT is a complex decision process regarding supplier adaptation, and can be a highly emotional experience with long-lasting effects. Originality/value/contribution: By merging the influence strategy research stream and the supplier adaptation research stream together, the study generates a few original and noteworthy contributions. A better understanding of threats is garnered by breaking them down into three components, which consequently extends our understanding of influence strategies. The study also contributes to a deeper understanding of the supplier’s DUT, a new concept described in the paper, by identifying how decision makers include multiple criteria in their decision process. Very few academic papers have specifically looked into threats as a coercive strategy despite its prevalent use in business environments. Those that did focused on a limited set of criteria when analyzing the decision to adapt. The article expands on these previous studies by proposing five decision criteria, which are often considered collectively by participants when examining adaptation under threat, and emphasizes a factor neglected in previous research, namely the role of emotions

Salesforce responsive roles in turbulent times: case studies in agility selling

Purpose Salespeople are at the forefront of the external environment where they act as the first responders to critical events and their resulting business turbulence. How the salesforce responds to turbulence is, therefore, of great interest both theoretically and in practice. The paper aims to rekindle interest in agility selling, which is the most adequate behavioral sales model to exploit environmental uncertainty. Design/methodology/approach An organizational autoethnography complemented with data from in-depth interviews with key salespeople involved in turbulence resulted in the development of eight case studies. Findings Salespeople use agility selling through four possible responsive roles. They amplify, innovate, cooperate or mitigate turbulence to exploit its ensuing opportunity or minimize its negative effect for both the supplier and the customer. The article enhances the agility selling model by putting three core abilities in the forefront: (1) forecasting turbulence from critical events, (2) responding to changes quickly and adequately and (3) exploiting changes as opportunities. Research limitations/implications The article argues that critical events are the cause of the turbulence that the salesforce must deal with before it hits the dyad. Agility selling represents an untapped research opportunity in business-to-business sales, and sales management, as well as within the overall agile organization. Practical implications Sales organizations would greatly benefit in implementing training of agility selling’s core abilities because responsiveness is a valuable tool for salespeople in times of turbulence. Originality/value The study is the first to empirically demonstrate the existence of agility selling

The ethics of entrepreneurial philanthropy

A salient if under researched feature of the new age of global inequalities is the rise to prominence of entrepreneurial philanthropy, the pursuit of transformational social goals through philanthropic investment in projects animated by entrepreneurial principles. Super-wealthy entrepreneurs in this way extend their suzerainty from the domain of the economic to the domains of the social and political. We explore the ethics and ethical implications of entrepreneurialphilanthropy through systematic comparison with what we call customaryphilanthropy, which preferences support for established institutions and social practices. We analyse the ethical statements made at interview by 24 elite UK philanthropists, 12 customary and 12 entrepreneurial, to reveal the co-existence of two ethically charged narratives of elite philanthropic motivations, each instrumental in maintaining the established socio-economic order. We conclude that entrepreneurial philanthropy, as an ostensibly efficacious instrument of social justice, is ethically flawed by its unremitting impulse toward ideological purity

L’auto-ethnographie collaborative organisationnelle (ACOR) : quand le « je » devient « nous »

L’objectif de cet article est d’offrir à la communauté scientifique une méthode émergente pour la recherche dans les organisations, soit l’auto-ethnographie collaborative organisationnelle (ACOR). Bien que l’auto-ethnographie soit pratiquée depuis quelques dizaines d’années, sa version collaborative est plus rare et n’a été que très peu utilisée en recherche organisationnelle. L’article fait ressortir les avantages de cette méthode sur l’ethnographie et l’auto-ethnographie individuelle, particulièrement pour ce qui est de la rigueur scientifique, de l’introspection, de la rétrospection et de l’éthique. L’article présente aussi les étapes de base de l’ACOR en s’appuyant sur une étude qui a été effectuée auprès d’une équipe de vente.The objective of this article is to provide the scientific community with an emerging method for organizational research, Collaborative Organizational Autoethnography (COA). While autoethnography has been practised for several decades, the collaborative version is rarer and has not been used very much in organizational research. The article highlights the advantages of this method over ethnography and individual autoethnography, particularly with respect to scientific rigor, introspection, retrospection and ethics. The article also presents the basic steps in COA based on a study performed with a sales team

Delayed neuroendocrine sexual maturation in female rats after a very low dose of Bisphenol A through altered GABAergic neurotransmission and opposing effects of a high dose.

Rat sexual maturation is preceded by a reduction of the interpulse interval (IPI) of gonadotropinreleasing hormone (GnRH) neurosecretion. This work aims at studying disruption of that neuroendocrine event in females after early exposure to a very low dose of Bisphenol A (BPA), a ubiquitous endocrine disrupting chemical. Female rats were exposed to vehicle or BPA 25 ng/kg.day, 25 g/kg.day, or 5 mg/kg.day from postnatal day (PND) 1 to 5 or 15. Exposure to 25 ng/kg.day of BPA for 5 or 15 days was followed by a delay in developmental reduction of GnRH IPI studied ex vivo on PND 20. After 15 days of exposure to that low dose of BPA, vaginal opening tended to be delayed. In contrast, exposure to BPA 5 mg/kg.day for 15 days resulted in a premature reduction inGnRHIPI and a trend toward early vaginal opening. RNAseq analysis on PND20 indicated that exposure to BPA resulted in opposing dose effectsonthemRNAexpression of hypothalamic genes involved inGABAA neurotransmission. The study of GnRH secretion in vitro in the presence of GABAA receptor agonist/antagonist confirmed an increased or a reduced GABAergic tone after in vivo exposure to the very low or the high dose of BPA, respectively. Overall, we show for the first time that neonatal exposure to BPA leads to opposing dose-dependent effects on the neuroendocrine control of puberty in the female rat. A very low and environmentally relevant dose of BPA delays neuroendocrine maturation related to puberty through increased inhibitory GABAergic neurotransmission

Factors contributing to the impairment of growth in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Growth was studied in 88 long-term survivors of acute lymphoblastic leukemia who had been treated with three different regimens of therapy. The following time periods were evaluated: (1) during therapy; (2) between the end of therapy and the onset of puberty, and (3) between the onset of puberty and the most recent observation. We found: (1) a reduction of height SDS during therapy, related to the irradiation dose used; no significant effect of the duration of the therapy could be established; (2) a normal growth rate during the second time period studied for the total group, but a further decrease in height SDS for those found to be growth hormone deficient after therapy (47%), and (3) a further decrease in height SDS during puberty. The timing of puberty in the female patients was normal. We conclude that in patients treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, growth impairment has several components, different in timing and mechanism