Engagement in corporate environmentalism has become increasingly important across all tiers of the supply chain, from upstream raw material suppliers to downstream retailers. However, the contextual role of a firm's supply chain position (SCP) on the adoption of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices and their performance implications has not been empirically explored. We derive a conceptual model combining the contingent natural resource‐based view (NRBV) with stakeholder theory. The resulting hypotheses are tested using cross‐industry data of 284 firms utilizing primary and secondary data. Findings reveal a phenomenon we term the Supply Chain Position Paradox: The closer a company is located toward the end consumer, the higher its GSCM practice levels. Conversely, performance gains decrease with company proximity to the end consumer. This paradox is grounded in a mismatch between the level of five specific GSCM practice categories and their respective performance implications. The introduction of SCP as an overlooked contextual factor adds new insights into the “GSCM practice–performance link” and extends current GSCM research. Moreover, our results yield insights to supply chain management executives in optimizing their GSCM practice portfolios.
Additive manufacturing (AM) appears to be a particularly attractive use case for blockchain. This research combines inductive in‐depth interviews with the Delphi method to explore what potentials blockchain technology in AM creates, which adoption barriers firms need to overcome, and how supply chains will be affected by the integration of these two potentially disruptive technologies. The results suggest opportunities that are related to intellectual property (IP) rights management, the monitoring of printed parts throughout their lifecycle, process improvements, and data security. The most important barriers for blockchain adoption in AM are an absence of blockchain‐skilled specialists on the labor market, missing governance mechanisms, and a lack of firm‐internal technical expertise. By addressing important limitations of AM, blockchain is expected to improve the competitiveness of AM in parts’ production, catalyzing the trend toward more decentralized manufacturing resulting in more agile, resilient, and flexible supply chains and reduced logistics costs. Beyond that, blockchain‐based AM platforms are expected to enhance supply chain visibility, drive supply chain digitalization, support supply chain finance, and contribute to the emergence of shared factory systems.
Blockchain is a prominently discussed technology in operations and supply chain management and firms increasingly engage in blockchain initiatives. Yet, an understanding of the technology's financial value remains elusive. Based on 175 firm announcements between 2015 and 2019, we conduct an international event study to estimate the impact of blockchain initiatives on the market value of the firm. We empirically demonstrate that blockchain announcements are associated with a significant average abnormal return of 0.30% on the announcement day, and that there are indications of positive long‐term effects on shareholder value. We further demonstrate how blockchain use case, project, and firm characteristics affect the stock market reaction. Specifically, we find that the stock market reaction to blockchain announcements is less positive when blockchain is used to trace physical objects or to share sensitive data, providing empirical evidence for the risk associated with current challenges in the design of blockchain use cases. Our results also suggest that the involvement of an external information technology service provider in a blockchain project attenuates the positive stock market reaction. Interestingly, more innovative firms do not experience a stronger stock market reaction to blockchain announcements. Leveraging the international scope of our sample, we further shed light on how the firm's competitive (i.e., industry factors) and macro environment (i.e., country factors) affect the stock market reaction. Our findings indicate that the industry's R&D intensity and the country's data restriction level play a crucial role in driving the value attributed to blockchain initiatives.
We build upon supply chain management and social media research by exploring the Twitter response to supply chain glitches and how this response may moderate the relationship between supply chain glitches and stock market returns. We analyze data on 213 supply chain glitches for 150 firms across 5 years and over 2 billion tweets on publicly traded firms. Leveraging event study methodology, we find support for our hypotheses. Using both volume and sentiment of tweets, we observe significant reactions on Twitter after supply chain glitches; tweet volume increases and tweets become more negative. We also find that Twitter reactions after a glitch accentuate the relationship between supply chain glitches and stock market returns, demonstrating how social media may elevate the prominence of supply chain problems. To address concerns associated with simultaneity bias, we demonstrate that pre‐stock‐market‐open Twitter activity preempts post‐stock‐market‐open returns. Finally, we conduct post hoc analyses that explore how firms can leverage Twitter to counteract the negative stock market consequences of Twitter, and how firm proximity to the end customer may influence how tweets moderate the stock market reaction to glitches.
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