The Dark Side of Collaborative Buyer-Supplier Relationships: A Social Capital Perspective

McCarter

Supply Chain Management: An International Journal

et al. 2015

160

191

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to elaborate theory regarding the reasons why collaboration strategies fail. The relational view posits that supply chain integration can be a source of competitive advantage. Few firms, however, successfully co-create value to attain supernormal relational rents. Design/methodology/approach – This study uses a quasi-longitudinal, multi-case interview methodology to explore the reasons why collaboration strategies fail to deliver intended results. The authors interviewed managers at 49 companies in Period 1 and managers at 57 companies in Period 2. In all, 15 companies participated in both rounds of interviews. Findings – This study builds and describes a taxonomy of relational resistors. The authors then explore how sociological and structural resistors reinforce each other to undermine collaborative behavior. Specifically, the interplay among resistors: obscures the true sources of resistance; exacerbates a sense of vulnerability to non-collaborative behavior that reduces the willingness to invest in relational architecture; and inhibits the development of essential relational skills and organizational routines. Originality/value – This research identifies and describes the behaviors and processes that impede successful supply chain alliances. By delving into the interplay among relational resistors, the research explains the detail and nuance of inter-firm rivalry and supply chain complexity. Ultimately, it is the re-enforcing nature of various resistors that make it so difficult for firms to realize relational rents.

Section: Low Trustmentioning

confidence: 93%

Why supply chain collaboration fails: the socio-structural view of resistance to relational strategies

McCarter

Supply Chain Management: An International Journal

et al. 2015

160

191

“…Gu, Hung, and Tse (2008) find that close social relations facilitate channel effectiveness but stunt the flow of new ideas. Similarly, empirical findings imply a curvilinear relationship between behavioral constraints and social capital, thereby suggesting an optimal level of relatedness (Villena et al ., ). Designing the SI initiative to manage the degree of relatedness and keep technical goals salient will diminish the behavioral constraints that stem from social associations between firms.…”

Section: A Socio‐technical Perspective On Supplier Integrationmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Rather, our STS perspective suggests that the way SI initiatives are designed results in unintended social processes that affect behaviors. As such, we contribute to SI theory building in several ways (see Ketchen & Hult, ): (1) we extend STS theory to the inter‐organizational context to provide a framework for understanding behavioral constraints to SI; (2) we consider a broad array of social, technical, and environmental factors that inform socialization, social capital, and dark‐side streams of SI research (Bernardes, ; Petersen et al ., ; Villena, Revilla, & Choi, ); (3) we suggest approaches for preventing problems by designing SI initiatives that account for social processes; and (4) we reveal fruitful avenues of SI research and foreshadow new roles that supply managers will have in years to come. In sum, our paper offers new interorganizational uses for STS theory while suggesting multiple yet holistic avenues for improving the theory and practice of SI.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing Behavioral Constraints to Supplier Integration: A Socio‐Technical Systems Perspective

Kull

Ellis

Narasimhan

2013

J Supply Chain Manag

Despite the benefits of supplier integration (SI), research suggests such collaborative initiatives are inhibited by behavioral constraints. While studies tend to advance technical reasons that hinder SI, we draw from socio-technical system (STS) theory to suggest that the interaction among social, technical, and environmental features can give rise to behaviors that constrain SI. We conceptualize buying and supplying firms as two distinct social-technical systems and SI as a merging of technical systems across firms. We posit that behavioral constraints, which limit the realization of SI goals, arise when technical integration commences without appropriate a priori consideration for the social or environmental implications of technical changes. Our conceptual development not only proposes specific social processes that increase the likelihood of behavioral constraints during SI, but also suggests technical approaches to prevent them. Further, we identify salient environmental contingencies affecting the emergence of behavioral constraints. By extending STS theory to the interorganizational context, we contribute to SI research by offering a holistic view of SI and proposing ways managers can address the challenges that exist.Keywords: behavioral supply management; supplier management; human judgment and decision making; technology management; conceptual theory building Volume 49, Number 1 1 Some theorists incorporate organizational structure as a fourth subsystem (Seiler, 1967), but the broad definition of technology would include organizational structure (a.k.a. organizational design) because designs are for organizational purposes.

“…Despite its benefits, supplier integration can entail significant costs and challenges. For example, supplier integration requires the allocation of considerable technical and managerial resources (Freel, ; Ledwith & Coughlan, ), implies a great deal of interdependence with regard to design tasks and technological trajectories (Mikkola, ), complicates communication channels (McCutcheon, Grant, & Hartley, ), and creates substantial risks for both parties (Villena, Revilla, & Choi, ). Ultimately, the diseconomies of buyer‐supplier integration can offset or seriously reduce its benefits, as suggested by the fact that a number of empirical studies did not find evidence that supplier integration had a positive impact on NPD performance (Hartley, Zirger, & Kamath, ; McCutcheon et al., ; Koufteros, Vonderembse, & Jayaram, ), and that some studies even found this effect to be negative (King & Penlesky, ; Birou, ; Eisenhardt & Tabrizi, ; Von Corswant & Tunälv, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supplier Integration and NPD Outcomes: Conditional Moderation Effects of Modular Design Competence

Salvador

Villena

2013

J Supply Chain Manag

Self Cite

Integrating suppliers into new product development (NPD) projects offers manufacturers the potential for substantial improvements in the new product being designed. However, it also creates significant inter‐organizational integration diseconomies that can negatively affect the manufacturing cost and performance of the designed product. We propose that these diseconomies can be reduced to the extent that the manufacturer is able to design modular products — i.e., it has a modular design competence (MDC). We also suggest that such an effect tends to become weaker for high levels of product and process innovation. We test our hypotheses on an international sample of 165 NPD projects using hierarchical linear regression. Our results provide support for the moderation effect of MDC and partial support for the weakening of this effect under high product and process innovation. We discuss the implications for the literature of buyer‐supplier relationships in NPD, inter‐firm modularity and product‐process‐supply chain design as well as practice.