Small and Medium sized Enterprises’ Collaborative Buyer-Supplier Relationships: Boundary Spanning Individual Perspectives

Boundary-spanning individuals (BSIs) play a critical role in supply chain management, especially in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) where interactions with buyers and suppliers can depend heavily on just a few individuals. This study, utilizing data from Korean manufacturing-sector SMEs, explores whether cooperative social value orientations of SMEs’ BSIs influence the effects of collaborative buyer-supplier initiatives. The results suggested that the performance implication of decision-sharing initiative increases when BSIs have a high level of cooperative social value orientation. However, it also negatively moderates the relationship between risk/benefit sharing (involving financial losses or gains) and performance suggesting possible negative side-effects. However, we found that such orientation also negatively moderates the relationship between risk/benefit sharing (involving direct financial losses or gains) and relationship performance suggesting possible negative side-effects

Understanding of online hotel booking process: A multiple method approach

With the development of information technology, online travel agency has become an important information and communication source in the hospitality industry. The previous studies assessing the online hotel decision-making behaviours, however, mainly focused on behavioural intentions as well as identifying factors that directly influence the transactional behaviours, which rely on a static approach rather than employing the holistic viewpoints. Thus, this research adopted the choice-set model as a theoretical lens to explore online hotel booking behaviours by using multiple methods (i.e. observation and survey methods). The findings of this research shed light on the dynamic patterns of online hotel decision-making process and identify important factors (i.e. internal and external information sources) across sequential stages of the choice-set model. Therefore, this research provides useful implications to online hospitality marketers

A dyadic perspective on retailer-supplier relationships through the lens of social capital

Social capital theory has received increasing attention as a lens through which to examine supply chain relationships and the value creation process. Despite the growing application of social capital and its three dimensions, namely cognitive, structural and relational capital, to inter-organizational research, few studies in reality have taken a dyadic perspective. Using a paired sample of retailer-supplier relationships from Korean fast-moving consumer goods sector, we explore the configuration of social capital dimensions, and the impact on strategic and operational performance. The results suggest three clusters of relationships, which differ significantly on at least two of the dimensions of social capital. Furthermore, these clusters show considerable differences with respect to both operational and strategic performance, particularly at the lower levels of social capital. We also examine the impact of a disparity between the retailer and supplier with respect to different dimensions of social capital, henceforth called dissonance. Of the four clusters that emerge, interestingly, only dissonance on the cognitive dimension is related to lower operational and strategic relationship performance. In investigating the implications of dissonance for the retailer and supplier individually, our results suggest that performance differs based on the magnitude and direction of the dissonance. Our results show that consequences of having social capital or not are not necessarily the same for the retailer and the supplier

Managing a successful supply chain partnership

This thesis presents three studies in Supply Chain Partnership. The first study is to develop a supply chain partnership classification scheme for academic and managerial purposes. The main characteristics of the classification scheme we obtained are that this scheme is 1) specialised for supply chain partnerships, 2) empirically derived, and 3) based on the five determinants of supply chain performance. In addition, the newly developed scheme has provided an important insight into the pattern of the evolution of supply chain partnerships. On the basis of these findings, some requirements for the evolution of supply chain partnerships, which are in the form of components of the partnership development management, were suggested. In the second study, we have identified the major factors of a successful supply chain partnership and estimated models for the three dimensions of supply chain partnership performance. The three performance models provide an important foundation for developing a 'supply chain partnership performance management scheme'. In the final study we have confirmed that suppliers and customers do see things significantly differently, and there is the negative association between these differences and the performance of a supply chain partnership. The third study is exploratory in nature; thus, it has provided some interesting research opportunities for academics

Supply chain information in analyst reports on publicly traded companies

Analyst reports are an important source of secondary data on companies for understanding a company's performance in the recent past and for getting guidance on its future performance. We therefore analyzed the text of 1028 equity analyst reports of 145 Fortune 500 Global companies (not including services sectors like IT or banking) published between 2009 and 2011 for supply chain related information. We found that nearly three-fifths of these reports contained supply chain information pertaining to inbound, process or outbound aspects of the supply chain of the company. At the report level, there are significant industry effects for supply chain related content in analyst reports. On the other hand, aggregating information at the company level, it appears that analysts focus on a particular supply chain aspect for a company as well as its sector. Furthermore, logistic regression analysis suggests a link between the supply chain information provided when this is positive in orientation and the buy/sell/hold recommendation of the analyst regarding the company's stock

Investigating the Fair Treatment of Suppliers and its Trust Fostering Role and Performance Benefits

An increasing number of companies have begun to make efforts to treat their suppliers fairly as a part of wider corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Few studies, however, have investigated the performance implications of such efforts for buying firms. This paper uses both organisational climate theory and social exchange theory to investigate (1) if buying firms' efforts in the form of a code of conduct for its procurement practitioners pay off, and (2) its mechanisms from the perspectives of procurement practitioners. We use a multi-method approach, combining analysis of survey data complemented by results from a behavioural experiment. First, survey data were gathered from 327 Korean manufacturing companies and analysed using structural equation modelling. Second, the findings were complemented by a behavioural experiment involving 120 subjects. The results support the positive performance implications of fair supplier treatment in the form of codes of conduct for procurement practitioners. The paper also offers insights into how such efforts benefit buying firms, which is due to the trust in the buyer-supplier relationship fostered by the resulting ethical behaviours of procurement practitioners

Thermal expansion of solid solutions Kr-CH₄ at temperatures of liquid helium

A negative contribution of the CH₄ impurity to the thermal expansion of the solution has been revealed in the dilatometric studies of solid Kr + 0.76% CH4, Kr + 5.25% CH₄, and Kr + 10.5% CH₄ solutions at 1-23 K. It is shown that the negative contribution results from changes in the occupancy of the ground state of the A-modifications of isolated CH₄ molecules. Assuming that the CH₄ impurity singles and clusters contribute to the thermal expansion independently, we can estimate their contributions. The contribution of the singles to the thermal expansion of the solid solution is negative. The energies of the first excitational rotational states were determined for singles and two-body and three-body clusters of the CH₄ molecules

Argon effect on thermal expansion of fullerite C₆₀

The linear thermal expansion of compacted Ar-doped fullerite C₆₀(ArxC₆₀) is investigated at 2-12 K using dilatometric method. The thermal expansion of ArxC₆₀ was also studied after partial desaturation of argon from fullerite. It is revealed that argon doping resulted in the considerable change of the temperature dependence of the thermal expansion of fullerite. An explanation of the observed effects is proposed

Low temperature thermal expansion of fullerite C₆₀ alloyed with argon and neon

Динамика кристаллической решетки The linear thermal expansion of compacted fullerite C₆₀ alloyed with argon (ArxC₆₀) and neon (NexC₆₀) are investigated by a dilatometric method. The experimental temperature is 2-12 K. In the same temperature interval the thermal expansion of ArxC₆₀ and NexC₆₀ are examined after partial desaturation of the gases from fullerite. It is found that Ar and Ne alloying affects the temperature dependence of the thermal expansion coefficient of C₆₀ quite appreciably. The libration and translation contributions to the thermal expansion of pure C₆₀ are separated. The experimental results on the thermal expansion are used to obtain the Debye temperature of pure C₆₀. The effects observed are tentatively interpreted

Calculating the jet-quenching parameter in STU background

In this paper we use the AdS/CFT correspondence to compute the jet-quenching parameter in a N=2 thermal plasma. We consider the general three-charge black hole and discuss some special cases. We add a constant electric field to the background and find the effect of the electric field on the jet-quenching parameter. Also we include higher derivative terms and obtain the first-order correction for the jet-quenching parameter.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, revised versio