A study on the antecedents of supplier commitment in support of logistics operations

Abstract

Supplier inputs need to be delivered at the right time in the right quality and quantity to fully satisfy the operations requirements of buying firms. In achieving these performance goals, the importance of supplier commitment in managing the buyer-supplier relationship (BSR) should not be neglected in logistics operations. Due to organisational differences on operations priorities, it is a challenging task to manage a BSR which is inherently complex with many transactional and institutional aspects involved. This challenge is salient in logistics management with multiple upstream and downstream parties involved where the lack of concerted efforts can compromise performance of the entire logistics chain. For many enterprises, it remains unclear on how to nurture supplier commitment in support of their logistics operations. Considering this research void, we examine the antecedents of supplier commitment covering both transactional and institutional factors influencing supplier commitment in the BSR. Survey data collected from 358 suppliers of an international buying firm indicate that business uncertainty discourages supplier commitment, but the commitment can be reinforced with both explicit and implicit contracts used for governing the BSR.

Key antecedents and practices for Supply Chain Management adoption in project contexts

“…The model shows that root-causes of SCM initially lie within the organization regarding the will and/or the capability to extend the planning process outside the borders to partners and company borders to other SC players: the commitment of top-commitment of top management (variable 2) and the strategic planning among SC participants (variable 14) should firstly focus on an internal alignment toward SCM achieving internal integration (variable 8), commitment of SC participants (variable 3) and congruence of players' objectives (variable 4) before to pursue external integration. This result supports previous works by Wong et al (2012) and by Lambert and Knemeyer (2004), which highlighted the core relevance of internal antecedents in terms of will and capabilities. However, this study shows how this class of variables does not directly impact on the success of SCM implementation rather they represent the basis to assess other functional/preparatory variables.…”

Environmental Governance of Enterprises and their Economic Upshot through Corporate Reputation and Customer Satisfaction

“…Such a cross‐sectional approach lacks longitudinal insights on the proposed relationships. Future research should extend our work to other contexts, such as investigating small and medium enterprises, firms in other industries such as shipping and transport logistics (Wong et al ., ) and firms in other countries, so as to ascertain that our hypothesized relationships are robust in different contextual settings.…”

The combined effects of internal and external supply chain integration on product innovation

“…Through interaction, communication, information sharing, coordination and collaboration across functional departments, II is known to have a positive effect on the performance of new product development and innovation (Gupta et al, 1986;Griffin & Hauser, 1996;Olson et al, 1995;Griffin, 1997;Troy et al, 2010). Based on the similar arguments, EI involves similar efforts between customers and suppliers, which can support joint development of new products (Ettlie & Reza, 1992;Griffin & Hauser, 1996;Handfield et al, 1999;Verona, 1999;Ragatz et al, 1997Ragatz et al, & 2002Monczka et al, 2000;Koufterous et al, 2005;Petersen et al, 2005;Tessarolo, 2007;Lau et al, 2010;Wong et al, 2012).…”