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We study a supply chain where a retailer buys from a supplier who faces financial constraints. Informational problems about the supplier's demand prospects and production capabilities restrict her access to capital. By committing to a minimum purchase quantity, the retailer can mitigate these informational problems and expand the supplier's feasible production set. We assume a newsvendor model of operations and analyze the strategic interaction of the two parties as a sequential game. Key parameters in our model are the supplier's ex ante credit limit, her informational transparency-which conditions the amount of additional capital released by the commitment-and the demand characteristics of the final market. We show that in equilibrium the supplier can benefit from a lower ex ante credit limit or lower informational transparency. The retailer always benefits from an increase in these parameters. We also indicate limits to the commitment approach: under certain conditions, the retailer may prefer to relax the supplier's financial constraint by adjusting the wholesale price, or a combination of wholesale price and commitment. Our study provides a novel perspective on capital market frictions in supply chains.

Much of the potential of industrial additive manufacturing (AM) is said to lie in the digital specification of components that can be transmitted seamlessly and unambiguously to partners fostering flexible outsourcing. In industry, we observe nuanced AM supply chain governance structures that result from make-or-buy decisions, with a tendency to implement AM in-house. Thus, there is a discrepancy between what is discussed in the literature and implemented in practice. We apply a multiple-case study approach to investigate why and how AM impacts the make-or-buy decision of manufacturing firms. We identify four decision profiles demonstrating the spectrum of specific governance structures and develop a framework to explain the underlying rationales. We find strong arguments for in-house AM including firms' perceived need to protect their digitally encapsulated intellectual property, reevaluation of their core competencies, commitment to internal learning, and senior management's enthusiasm for AM. By using transaction cost economics and the resource-based view, we contribute to the understanding of how arguments of these general theories are modified by the digital and emerging traits of AM. We reveal contradicting guidance in the theories' argumentation for the case of AM and provide managers a clear perspective on alternative strategies for their AM implementation process.

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