a b s t r a c tInter-organizational exchange governance approaches are often characterized as two broad types: relational and transactional. However, in fast changing business contexts, the contextual contingencies do not present ideal conditions for practicing purely relational or transactional approach. Understanding the dynamic of key contextual factors and their effects on a firm's resource capabilities and interorganizational power structure is crucial for identifying the appropriate governance structure over time.In this paper we explore the exchanges between an OEM and five of its strategic suppliers that operate in high-end, short product life cycle motorbike industry, to understand the key contextual factors and the relationships among business context, governance structure, and exchange practices in a dyadic context. It is observed that firms deviate from the conventional choices of either transactional or relational governance to a combination of contractual and relational aspects to make the governance structure effective. Based on case studies, a theoretical framework is proposed to explain the rationale, feasibility and effectiveness of combining contractual and relational aspects in different contexts. The framework suggests that the degree of strategic interdependence between the trading partners fundamentally drives the effectiveness of governance structure and exchange practices.

In industrial purchasing contexts firms often procure a set of products from the same suppliers to benefit from economies of scale and scope. These products are often at different stages of their respective product life cycles (PLCs). Firms consider multiple criteria in purchasing such products, and the relative importance of these criteria varies depending on the PLC stage of a given product. Therefore, a firm should select suppliers and choose sourcing arrangements such that product requirements across multiple criteria are satisfied over time. The extant models in sourcing literature for evaluating and selecting suppliers for a portfolio of products have not considered this important and practical issue faced by firms. This article proposes a mathematical model that effectively addresses this issue and contributes to the sourcing literature by demonstrating an approach for optimally selecting suppliers and supplier bids given the relative importance of multiple criteria across multiple products over their PLC. The application of the model on a hypothetical data set illustrates the strategic and tactical significance of such considerations.

a b s t r a c tDirect investments in supplier development and close relationship building are the two major collaborative supplier management strategies for developing and accessing superior supplier capability. The impact of these two strategies, however, has not been uniform across firms, calling for a deeper examination of their relative effectiveness. Utilizing multiple theoretical frameworks, this study examines the relevance and effectiveness of the two collaborative strategies across the growth and maturity stages of the product life cycle (PLC). Specifically, the study analyzes the influence of competitive intensity as an antecedent to supplier development and relational initiatives, and the role of product life cycle as a moderator of the inter-relationships among competitive intensity, supplier development, relational initiatives, and supplier capability. Based on primary survey data, and discussion with practicing managers, the study finds that the individual and integrative effectiveness of supplier development investments (SDI) and relational orientation (RO) can be influenced differently by competitive intensity and PLC stage. In particular, RO can have a foundational role in motivating SDI for superior supplier capability, as also in safeguarding against supplier opportunism in the standardized product market context of the maturity stage. The managerial and theoretical implications of varied emphasis on the two collaborative supplier management strategies across the PLC stages are discussed.

Supplier relationship management and supplier development initiatives assume a fundamental role in enterprise supply chain management. An important aspect of effective supplier relationship management is the role of trust. This paper seeks to understand whether supplier relationship management or supplier development initiative should be emphasized as a firm strives to achieve superior supplier performance. The analysis and discussion draws upon sourcing strategy literature and is based on empirical survey-data of mid to upper level managers with responsibility for supply management initiatives in their respective organizations in Denmark and in the USA. It examines the interrelationships among "relational norms", "trust", "supplier development initiatives" and ensuing "supplier performance". The data analysis shows that firms must emphasize relation and trust building activities before investing in supplier development initiative. Supplier perception audits must be routinely performed to gauge the level of trust and strength of relational norms.

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The jellyfish topology where switches are connected using a random graph has recently been proposed for large scale data-center networks. It has been shown to offer higher bisection bandwidth and better permutation throughput than the corresponding fat-tree topology with a similar cost. In this work, we propose a new routing scheme for jellyfish that out-performs existing schemes by more effectively exploiting the path diversity, and comprehensively compare the performance of jellyfish and fat-tree topologies with HPC workloads. The results indicate that both jellyfish and fattree topologies offer comparable high performance for HPC workloads on systems that can be realized by 3-level fat-trees using the current technology and the corresponding jellyfish topologies with similar costs. Fat-trees are more effective for smaller systems while jellyfish is more scalable.

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This investigation seeks to explore the effectiveness of alternative approaches to supply chain management for developing the base of the pyramid (BoP) community. Using case research methodology, we investigate the issue of supply chain alignment when the supply base consists of BoP producers. We consider the handloom supply chains in Odisha, India, as the context of our analysis. The study analyzes the supply chains of four handloom retailers. The retailers represent cooperative and private organizational systems with varied levels of operational integration. In light of the insights from these case studies, we theorize factors contributing to operational cost‐effectiveness and conceptualize approaches and considerations for improving the BoP community. Specifically, we clarify the usefulness of alternative supply chain alignment practices in promoting efficiency, innovation, and equitability among the BoP constituents and advance a set of propositions linking the motivations, strategies, practices, and performance in handloom supply chains. Limitations, theoretical and managerial contributions, and future research directions are discussed.