Collaborative Buyer-supplier Relationships Research Articles

Examining collaborative buyer-supplier relationships and social sustainability in the "new normal" era: the moderating effects of justice and big data analytical intelligence.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a slew of new business practices that have put the society and environment under strain. This has drawn the attention of supply chain researchers working to address the COVID-19 pandemic's looming social sustainability issues. Prior literature has indicated that collaborative relationships improve organizational performance. Over the past years, problems related to justice are reported (e.g., between Walmart Canada and the Lego group), which might negatively affect the buyer-supplier relationship. In the new normal, the effect of justice on collaborative buyer-supplier relationships on social sustainability in the COVID-19 context is obviously essential but under-explored. The current study examines buyer-supplier collaborative relationships' influence on social sustainability under the moderating effect of justice and big data analytical intelligence. In this paper, we employ the stakeholder resource-based view, loose coupling theory, and resource dependency theory as the theoretical lens to establish the research hypotheses. Using primary survey data collected from supply chain practitioners in South Africa, hypothesis testing is done using a covariance-based structural equation modelling technique. To enhance research rigor, we have checked the dyadic perspectives of both buyers and suppliers. Our empirical results reveal that collaborative buyer-supplier relationships positively influence supplier social sustainability in the new normal era. However, it is relatively stronger from the suppliers' perspective when compared with the buyers' perspective. Secondly, the moderating effect of perceptions of organizational justice and big data analytical intelligence on the relationship between collaborative buyer-supplier relationships and supplier social sustainability is also statistically significant. However, it is relatively stronger from the buyers' perspective when compared with the suppliers' perspective. These are major findings of this study. Theoretical and managerial implications are further discussed.

Purchasing realized absorptive capacity as the gateway to sustainable supply chain management

PurposeCompanies' ability to build sustainable supply chains and achieve strategic sustainability objectives largely depends on their supply network characteristics and the nature of the relationships with strategic suppliers. This poses the question of how purchasing departments can help to translate this sustainability commitment into performance benefits. The authors focus the attention on buyer-supplier information sharing practices and study how the availability of information interplays with the purchasing realized absorptive capacity (PRAC) to positively impact performance (operational, environmental and social).Design/methodology/approachThe study collected data from 305 procurement executives in four European countries and tested the hypotheses empirically using structural equation modeling. Mediation analysis is used to test the effect of PRAC on the relationship between buyer-supplier information sharing and performance.FindingsThe results show that increasing buyer-supplier information sharing is sufficient to obtain a positive impact on operational performance. To improve purchasing sustainability performance, companies need to develop their PRAC to adequately transform and exploit external information and identify opportunities in the environmental and social areas. Thanks to these purchasing capabilities, organizations can overcome potential trade-offs between different performance dimensions.Originality/valueIn the context of collaborative buyer-supplier relationships, this study is one of the first to propose purchasing knowledge management capabilities (i.e. PRAC) as a key factor to improve multiple performance dimensions. Additionally, it captures different sustainability aspects, concluding that organizations can improve purchasing operational, environmental and social performances by implementing appropriate information sharing mechanisms with suppliers and developing their PRAC.

Of barriers and bridges: Buyer–supplier relationships in health care

As the second largest expense category after labor, supply expense has received more strategic attention in recent years. Collaborative buyer-supplier relationships play a significant role in strategic supply chain management. In the health sector, however, buyer-supplier relationships are generally perceived as adversarial and distrusting. The aim of this study was to investigate the major buyer-supplier relationship barriers, with an emphasis on the role of the physician as a surrogate buyer in the hospital's procurement process. Semistructured interviews were conducted with informants from six health systems and five medical device manufacturers in the United States. Additional data were gathered through a focus group consisting of 10 senior-level physicians. A structured qualitative analysis identified important themes in buyer-supplier relationship factors. From the data, four major themes emerged regarding the barriers to collaborative buyer-supplier relationships: lack of information sharing, opportunistic pricing behavior, changing regulations, and physician-supplier alliances. Further investigation regarding the role of the physician in purchasing reveals triadic implications. The medical device market continues to exhibit strained buyer-supplier relationships. The physician's professional role in supply selection can undermine the hospital's strategic supply management efforts. Both buyers and suppliers need to exhibit more information transparency in order to develop collaborative relationships with at least a small number of strategic partners. Supply chain executives at hospitals need to play a more active role in facilitating the link between the hospital's physicians and suppliers. Alternatively, hospitals can provide physicians with substitute services to curb supplier influences on physician preferences.

Buyer opportunism in strategic supplier relationships: Triggers, manifestations and consequences

Opportunistic behavior is a well-known reason for the failure of collaborative buyer-supplier relationships. Despite the numerous studies on opportunism in buyer-supplier relationships, the individual level is largely understudied. We explore opportunistic behavior of purchasing professionals in strategic supplier relationships, focusing on triggers, manifestations and consequences. The Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was employed to interview professional purchasers in the Netherlands about their personal opportunistic behavior. This resulted in rich descriptions of 29 critical incidents of opportunistic buyer behavior, extracting first-hand information. We identified triggers that provoked purchasing professionals to behave opportunistically. These triggers are linked to specific manifestations and consequences.

Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises' Collaborative Buyer–Supplier Relationships: Boundary Spanning Individual Perspectives

Boundary‐spanning individuals (BSIs) play a critical role in supply chain management, especially in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) where interactions with buyers and suppliers can depend heavily on just a few individuals. This study, utilizing data from Korean manufacturing‐sector SMEs, explores whether cooperative social value orientations of SMEs' BSIs influence the effects of collaborative buyer‐supplier initiatives. The results suggested that the performance implication of decision‐sharing initiative increases when BSIs have a high level of cooperative social value orientation. However, it also negatively moderates the relationship between risk/benefit sharing (involving financial losses or gains) and performance suggesting possible negative side effects. However, we found that such orientation also negatively moderates the relationship between risk/benefit sharing (involving direct financial losses or gains) and relationship performance suggesting possible negative side effects.

A Transaction Cost Framework in Supply Chain Relationships: A Social Capital Perspective

ABSTRACTFostering strong and collaborative buyer–supplier relationships is essential for enhancing supply chain performance. Therefore, buyers and suppliers both attempt to develop collaborative relationships. Sometimes these collaborative activities do not result in a happy ending, and consequently, are harmful in the form of opportunism on the part of the buyer or supplier. Opportunism has remained significant in buyer–supplier studies. However, there is a lack of research on opportunism, behavioral uncertainty, and relationship-specific investments from the perspective of social capital factors in an industrial marketing setting. The primary aim of the current study is to identify the role of social capital and transaction cost theory variables. This study integrates different research on transaction cost theory variables and also reviews the relationship of these variables to social capital factors. The current study includes 83 studies from various journal article databases such as Wiley-Blackwell, Emerald, SpringerLink, Taylor & Francis, JSTOR, and ScienceDirect. This review focuses on the most recent studies. This study identifies various perspectives regarding the effect of social capital on transaction cost variables. Conclusions and implications for managers are also discussed.

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

The literature on supply chain management (SCM) has consistently promoted the “bright side” of collaborative buyer-supplier relationships (BSRs). Based on the social capital argument, SCM scholars have investigated how a buyer can gain access to and leverage resources through its collaborative BSRs. Our study extends this research stream by considering the “dark side” of social capital in BSRs. It evaluates how social capital in its cognitive, relational, and structural forms contributes to or impedes value creation within BSRs. Both primary survey measures and secondary objective measures have been used in data analysis. The results show the presence of both the bright side, confirming the existing literature, and the dark side, extending the literature. There is an inverted curvilinear relationship between social capital and performance: Either too little or too much social capital can hurt performance. This study confirms that building social capital in a collaborative BSR positively affects buyer performance, but that if taken to an extreme it can reduce the buyer’s ability to be objective and make effective decisions as well as increase the supplier’s opportunistic behavior. Our study also examines how a buyer can delay the emergence of the dark side. It opens up new research avenues in the collaborative BSR context and suggests directions for future research and practice.

Antidotes to the Dark Side of Collaborative Buyer-Supplier Relationships

Some scholars have recently warned us of the potential “dark” side of collaborative buyer-supplier relationships (BSRs). They are concerned about the loss of objectivity, increased opportunism and unnecessary redundancy. Our study extends this research stream by examining the mechanisms that can prevent or mitigate these negative outcomes. We consider, as social/incentive mechanisms, rotation policies and challenging goals, and as transactional mechanisms, detailed contracts and bilateral dependence. We also examine time-horizon factors such as the shadow of the past (interaction history) and shadow of the future (expectation of continuity) that can moderate these negative outcomes. We build on the theory of social capital and use primary survey and archival data encompassing 133 BSRs. As post hoc, we identify and interview seven buying companies on the dark side and four of their suppliers to collect contextual data on how they were coping with the dark side. The results confirm that buyers fall prey to the dark side when they have long working history and high expectation to continue with their collaborative suppliers. The results also point out that buyers can delay the arrival of the dark side by using contracts with detailed contingencies, fostering challenging goals, and adopting a policy of negotiator rotation. We finally discuss our study’s implications to theory and practice.

Knowledge integration taxonomy in buyer–supplier relationships: Trade-offs between efficiency and innovation

Abstract Based on the knowledge-based view of inter-firm collaboration, this study develops and proposes a parsimonious taxonomy of how buyers and suppliers develop knowledge integration in terms of two mechanisms: joint sense meaning and joint decision making. The first focuses on the interpretation and sense making of knowledge about strategic, relevant issues for the buyer–supplier relationship (BSR). The latter emphasizes joint problem solving related to their interlinked operative routine activities. Using survey data from 130 collaborative BSRs and cluster analysis, the results suggest that buyers that purposely develop a balanced knowledge integration with their suppliers—characterized by managing high levels of both joint sense meaning and joint decision making—show improved efficiency and innovation simultaneously even though they have to deal with the tension of managing the requirements of these two key, albeit competing outcomes. The results also suggest that buyers pursuing focused knowledge integration with their suppliers—characterized by managing high levels of either joint sense meaning or joint decision making—outperform in a specific outcome at the expense of the other. This study thus provides a comprehensive framework that allows organizations to evaluate the knowledge integration strategy that best supports their goals related to their collaborative buyer–supplier relationships.

Collaborative buyer–supplier relationships and downstream information in marketing channels

Research on buyer–supplier relationships has emphasized the importance of collaboration and business networks. We aim to study the effects of downstream information on the collaborative buyer–supplier relationship. Downstream information refers to the information a firm obtains from marketing channels, be they wholesalers, distributors or retailers. The approach allows firms to concentrate their efforts on the most relevant sources of information and not on the whole network. Survey data was gathered from the Dutch potted plant and flower industry to test this hypothesis. Our findings demonstrate that collaborative relationships are contingent on downstream information from both the buying perspective (wholesalers) and from the supplying perspective (producers).

Inter-organizational communication as a relational competency: Antecedents and performance outcomes in collaborative buyer–supplier relationships

Inter-organizational communication has been documented as a critical factor in promoting strategic collaboration among firms. In this paper, we seek to extend the stream of research in supply chain management by systematically investigating the antecedents and performance outcomes of inter-organizational communication. Specifically, inter-organizational communication is proposed as a relational competency that may yield strategic advantages for supply chain partners. Using structural equation modeling, we empirically test a number of hypothesized relationships based on a sample of over 200 United States firms. Our results provide strong support for the notion of inter-organizational communication as a relational competency that enhances buyers’ and suppliers’ performance. Implications for future research and practice are offered.

Partnership Sourcing: An Organization Change Management Perspective

SUMMARYThis article highlights the organization change implications for organizations that are attempting to develop collaborative relationships with their suppliers. The research focuses on four dimensions of collaborative relations including joint buyer‐supplier cost reduction, supplier involvement in new product development, delivery and logistics management, and core business strategy. A case study is presented which outlines how an organization adopted a strategy that led to extensive outsourcing and the adoption of more collaborative relations with its key suppliers. The pursuit of this strategy has acted as a stimulus for change within the organization. The article identifies a number of issues that must be addressed, including the adoption of an integrated approach to the management of strategic change, the pivotal role of senior managers as facilitators of this change, and the involvement of those most affected by the movement toward more collaborative buyer‐supplier relationships.