Sustainable supply chain management and partner engagement to manage climate change information

Climate change poses significant new risks and challenges for businesses and their supply chains. Additionally, in many sectors scope 3 indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from the sourcing and distribution of goods and services are larger than firms’ own carbon footprints. Here we study how firms engage their key stakeholders in their supply chains in obtaining, processing and transferring relevant climate change related information designed to overcome information asymmetry and drive sustainable development. Grounded in organisational information processing theory (OIPT), we draw on data from the Carbon Disclosure Project’s (CDP) Climate Change Supply Chain initiative for a qualitative content analysis of a large sample of global firms. Consistent with OIPT, we find that while firms primarily engage their supply chain partners in a variety of ways to reduce information uncertainty around indirect emissions data, effectively interpreting and managing broader sustainability information equivocality becomes a growing priority. Our findings further suggest that firms engage suppliers, customers and other supply chain partners through basic, transactional and collaborative types of engagement. We contribute to literatures on inter-organisational information processing and sustainable supply chain management by providing a more detailed understanding of how firms engage supply chain partners in the context of climate change

The manifestation of coordination failures in service triads

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate governance in service triads, specifically studying significant steering and connecting coordination failures, to reveal typically hidden characteristics and consequences. Design/methodology/approach: This study focuses on coordination functions and activities between a buyer (a government department), a customer (a military service) and two service providers. Rich data on these normally confidential service ties are drawn from an official report into the causes of a fatal accident involving a UK reconnaissance aircraft and specifically from the evidence presented regarding the earlier development of its complex safety case. The authors also analysed a range of additional secondary data sources. Findings: The authors examine the sources, drivers and manifestation of coordination failures. The authors uncover a series of coordination failures driven from the bridge position, revealing that while bounded rationality and opportunism influenced steering coordination failures, connecting coordination failures were associated with knowledge asymmetry, dyadic inertia and unethical practices. Practical implications: Organisations and governments delivering complex projects and knowledge-intensive professional services should guard against outsourcing the “coordination” activity to a third party, thereby relinquishing the bridge position. Handing over the bridge position to an integrator would leave the client vulnerable to coordination dysfunctions such as bounded rationality, opportunism, knowledge asymmetry, dyadic inertia and unethical practices. Originality/value: The study links the previously separate research streams of service triads and inter-organizational coordination. While extant research pays attention to mainly positive control functions, this study focuses on all three actors in two (failed) service triads – and highlights the impact of coordination activities and failures

Organizational Ambidexterity, Manufacturing Performance and Environmental Dynamism

Purpose - This research examines the relationship between organizational ambidexterity, the ability of companies to explore new and to exploit existing processes simultaneously, and manufacturing performance as represented by the sand cone model. Moreover, the paper analyses the impact of stable and dynamic environments on this relationship. Design/methodology/approach – A set of research questions are tested using structural equation modelling (SEM) on a sample of 231 Spanish manufacturing companies. Findings - Results illustrate a significant relationship between ambidexterity as the basis and enabler for manufacturing performance improvements, building on the sand cone model and its dimensions of quality, delivery, cost, and flexibility. This relationship is further emphasized when companies work in a dynamic environment. Practical implications – The study contributes to practice by investigating the important and yet under-explored relationships of ambidexterity, the sand cone model, performance, and a company’s wider market environment. Findings suggest a positive relationship between the sand cone model and ambidexterity capability. Originality/value - This study adds to the limited theoretical and empirical understanding of the relationships between ambidexterity, the sand cone model, environmental dynamism, and performance. It also contributes through a set of empirical data derived from Spanish manufacturing companies.This work has been developed with funding by and collaboration with the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Union. Project I+D ECO2010-15885 and ECO2013-47027-P, and Junta de Andalucía P11-SEJ-7294 and European Union (Fondos FEDER)