Role hazard between supply chain partners in an institutionally fragmented market

Abstract

A major challenge to supply chain management in emerging markets is the relational coordination problem arising from variations in sub‐national institutions in which partners are situated. This study investigates role hazard, a critical yet understudied relational coordination problem. Drawing on role and institutional theories, we examine role ambiguity and role conflict as two facets of role hazard between buyer and supplier, their institutional source, performance outcomes, and firms’ action alignment mechanisms as potential remedies. A dyadic survey of buyers and suppliers in China reveals that both role ambiguity and role conflict can result from sub‐national institutional distance and jeopardize supply chain performance. The results also suggest that supply chain partners in different sub‐national institutions can mitigate role hazard through continuous information sharing and dynamic adaptation. This study provides novel insights into how buyers and suppliers can enhance their relational coordination in emerging markets by reducing role hazard caused by sub‐national institutional distance.

Supply chain agility, adaptability and alignment

“…Following the RBV, literature has investigated supply chain connectivity (see Fawcett et al, 2009Fawcett et al, , 2011Prajogo and Olhager, 2012;Brandon-Jones et al, 2014;Jin et al, 2014) and information sharing (Premkumar and King, 1994;Prajogo and Olhager, 2012;Brandon-Jones et al 2014;Liu et al 2016;Dong et al 2016) as valuable organizational resources that are combined to generate capabilities (Grant, 1991). Barratt and Oke (2007) have argued that connectivity is a technological resource that enables effective information sharing.…”

“…Inspired by recent debates surrounding methodological criteria for survey based research (see Fawcett et al 2014;Guide and Ketokivi, 2015) we conducted some additional statistical tests to strengthen our claims. Before testing the research hypotheses, we tested for the endogeneity of the exogenous variable in our model (see Dong et al 2016;Liu et al 2016) by conducting the Durbin-Wu-Hausman test (Davidson and MacKinnon, 1993). We first regressed SC on SCAG, SCA and SCAL, then used the residual of this regression as an additional regressor in our hypothesized equations.…”

Determining the antecedents of dynamic supply chain capabilities

“…However, in order to empirically rule out the possibility of endogeneity, we applied the Durbin-Wu-Hausman test (Davidson & MacKinnon, 1993). We used the methodology suggested by Dong, Ju, and Fang (2016) in the Journal of Operations Management. We first regressed entrepreneurial orientation on the control variables and then considered the residual of this regression as an additional regressor in our hypothesized model.…”

Examining top management commitment to TQM diffusion using institutional and upper echelon theories

“…None of the significant correlations became non-significant after adjustment. To even further assess CMB, we compared the fit between the one-factor model, the measurement model with only traits, and the measurement model with both traits and a method factor (Dong et al 2016). The one-factor model yielded a chi-square ( ²=2001.83, p<0.000), that was significantly worse than that of the measurement model with only traits.…”