Megatrends 2022: Implikationen für den Einkauf

Welchen Einflussfaktoren sieht sich der Einkauf die nächsten Jahre ausgesetzt und was sind die zentralen Herausforderungen, denen er sich bis zum Jahr 2022 stellen muss?\ud Da der Einkauf die zentrale Schnittstelle zwischen Unternehmen und der Angebotsseite des Marktes darstellt, ist die Identifikation von langfristigen externen Veränderungen, sogenannten Megatrends, hilfreich. Aufgrund ihres lang andauernden und globalen Einflusses wird angenommen, dass die Auswirkungen von Megatrends das Handeln von Gesellschaften, Unternehmen und Regierungen für lange Zeit beeinflussen werden.\ud In der vorliegenden Studie werden fünf Megatrends vorgestellt sowie Maßnahmen, mittels derer sich Unternehmen auf dieseMegatrendsvorbereiten. Aus den Ergebnissen geht hervor, dass sich führende Unternehmen oftmals besser auf die Auswirkungen von Megatrends einstellen, während weniger erfolgreiche Unternehmen\ud Trends offenbar eher reaktiv abwarten. Relativierend lässt sich feststellen, dass die Megatrends immer wieder neu bewertet und kritisch hinterfragt werden sollten, um Fehleinschätzungen durch Trendabweichungen zu verhindern

Social capital determinants of preferential resource allocation in regional clusters

Regional clusters are known to facilitate firms in achieving higher levels of competitive advantage. This observation suggests that cluster firms manage to obtain better com- petitive resources than firms outside the cluster. The strong social ties in regional clus- ters are considered to be a crucial factor in the resource exchange between cluster firms. In this paper, we integrate this social perspective from the cluster literature with a recent stream in the \ud resource-based view (RBV) literature. This stream seeks to ex- plain the phenomenon of preferential resource allocation. That is, how can firms ob- tain better resources from a resource environment that is shared with competitors? Although preferential resource allocation has revealed to be a relevant concept, little is known about its actual antecedents. We introduce a onceptual framework that builds on the social interactions among cluster firms to explain the concept of preferential resource allocation. More specifically, we develop propositions on the antecedents of preferential resource allocation by building on the structural, relational, and cognitive dimensions of social capital theory, and a firm’ s embeddedness in a regional cluster. In so doing, this paper provides insights that may contribute to a better understanding of the competitive advantage of cluster firms, and it opens onto current streams in the RBV literature

Managing supplier satisfaction: Social capital and resource dependence frameworks

Recently, supplier satisfaction has gained more attention both in practice and in academic research. However, the knowledge accumulation process is still in an embryonic and explorative phase. Likewise, supplier satisfaction measuring in practice may still benefit from an impetus from academia to be more widely used. This paper aims at considerably expanding understanding of supplier satisfaction by proposing to apply a social capital and a resource dependence theory perspective. We expect an abundance of social capital in a relationship to relate positively to supplier satisfaction, whilst power disequilibrium and dependence from the buyer are expected to negatively relate to supplier satisfaction. It is worth highlighting that, according to research rooted in Hofstede's cultural dimensions model, the perception and acceptance of power differences resulting from a situation of dependency is highly culture specific. We therefore further hypothesise that supplier satisfaction will be moderated by cultural differences and ask researchers to take the cultural dimension into accoun