Suchergebnisse

The Covid-19 pandemic represents a low-probability, high-impact systemic risk that has severely disrupted international trade, reshaping the patterns of globalization. Drawing from the concept of supply chain resilience, which involves both the ability of a system to withstand an impact (robustness) and recover from it (responsiveness), we investigate country-level trade resilience during the 1st wave of the pandemic. By employing Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we identify configurations of country-level factors, i.e., country profiles, based on their effectiveness in engendering trade resilience. These factors include social and economic globalization, logistics performance, healthcare preparedness, national government response, and income level. The results show how these factors coalesced to strengthen (or weaken) international trade resilience, contributing to a holistic understanding of the impact of the pandemic on international trade. The findings inform the post-Covid-19 debate on international trade, with implications for managers and policymakers.

AbstractWe assess the ability of online employee-generated content in predicting consumption expenditures. In so doing, we aggregate millions of employee expectations for the next six-month business outlook of their employer and build an employee sentiment index. We test whether forward-looking employee sentiment can contribute to baseline models when forecasting aggregate consumption in the United States and compare its performance to well-established, survey-based consumer sentiment indexes. We reveal that online employee opinions have incremental information that can be used to augment the accuracy of consumption forecasting models and inform economic policy decisions.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the manufacturer-supplier relationship in service performance within service triads.


Design/methodology/approach
An abductive case-research approach was adopted, using three embedded cases and 26 interviews in complex, multilevel manufacturer-supplier relationships within the same service network. Cannon and Perreault's (1999) multidimensional relationship framework was deployed to achieve granular and nuanced insight.


Findings
This study corroborates the idea that relational relationships within service triads and servitization improve performance. The role of each relationship dimension in service performance is discerned and their interplay is captured in an analytic model. Information exchange, supplier relationship-specific adaptations, and the degree of formalization of the relationship directly influence performance, while cooperative norms and operational linkages are further back in the causal ordering. The study also highlights the importance of contingent factors (the size of the service site, the proportion of its revenues coming from service contract activities) and how they affect the relationship dimensions.


Research limitations/implications
The work was conducted in one network and the findings were generalized to theory rather than additional empirical settings.


Originality/value
This study is the first to derive a contextualized causal ordering of the Cannon and Perreault (1999) framework of relationship connectors and link it with service performance.

Purpose
Solutions provision depends on effective and efficient supply chains. Existing discourse within servitization has remained at the organisational or inter-organisational level with a limited emphasis on the role of individuals. However, supply chains are not just relationships between organisations, they are complex, inter-personal relationships that span organisational boundaries. The limited focus on boundary spanners and their interactions means that managerial roles critical for the provision of solutions remain unidentified. The purpose of this paper is to identify the functions, roles and practices of boundary spanners that connect organisations and enable the effective provision of solutions.


Design/methodology/approach
A case study comprising 61 interviews in 11 firms was conducted in the UK network of a commercial vehicles manufacturer, to investigate boundary spanning for product and solutions provision.


Findings
The functions of boundary spanners move from communicating product and price features in product provision towards strategic communication, dissonance reduction, professional education, consultation and leveraging offerings in solutions provision. The study also identifies the boundary spanning roles and practices that form these functions for solutions provision.


Originality/value
This is the first study in servitization that identifies and describes the boundary spanning functions, roles and practices. By adopting the lens of boundary spanning, the research addresses the lack of empirical managerial-level enquiry within servitization research. It extends the theoretical discussion on the differences between supply chain management in servitized vs product contexts.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the applicability and utility of supply chain (SC) segmentation through demand profiling to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of infrastructure projects by identifying different types of project demand profiles.


Design/methodology/approach
A three-stage abductive research design was adopted. Stage 1 explored the applicability of SC segmentation, through demand profiling, to the portfolio of infrastructure projects in a utility company. Stage 2 was an iterative process of "theory matching", to the portfolio, programme and project management literature. In stage 3, theoretical saturation was reached and "theory suggestions" were made through four propositions.


Findings
Four propositions outline how SC segmentation through project demand profiling could improve the effectiveness and efficiency of infrastructure projects. P1: the ability to recognise the different demand profiles of individual projects, and groups thereof, is a portfolio management necessity. P2: projects that contribute to the strategic upgrade of a capital asset should be considered a potential programme of inter-related repeatable projects whose delivery would benefit from economies of repetition. P3: the greater the ability to identify different demand profiles of individual/groups of projects, the greater the delivery efficiency. P4: economies of repetition developed through efficient delivery of programmes of repeatable projects can foster greater efficiency in the delivery of innovative projects through economies of recombination.


Originality/value
This work fills a gap in the portfolio management literature, suggesting that the initial screening, selection and prioritisation of project proposals should be expanded to recognise not only the project type, but also each project's demand profile.

PurposePresident Trump's tenure was accompanied by a series of protectionist measures that intended to reinvigorate US-based production and make manufacturing supply chains more "local". Amidst these increasing institutional pressures to localise, and the business uncertainty that ensued, this study investigates the extent to which manufacturers reconfigured their supply bases.Design/methodology/approachBloomberg's Supply Chain Function (SPLC) is used to manually extract data about the direct suppliers of 30 of the largest American manufacturers in terms of market capitalisation. Overall, the raw data comprise 20,100 quantified buyer–supplier relationships that span seven years (2014–2020). The supply base dimensions of spatial complexity, spend concentration and buyer dependence are operationalised by applying appropriate aggregation functions on the raw data. The final dataset is a firm-year panel that is analysed using a random effect (RE) modelling approach and the conditional means of the three dimensions are plotted over time.FindingsOver the studied timeframe, American manufacturers progressively reduced the spatial complexity of their supply bases and concentrated their purchase spend to fewer suppliers. Contrary to the aims of governmental policies, American manufacturers increased their dependence on foreign suppliers and reduced their dependence on local ones.Originality/valueThe research provides insights into the dynamics of manufacturing supply chains as they adapt to shifting institutional demands.

PurposeScholars studying servitization argue that manufacturers moving into services need to develop new job roles or modify existing ones, which must be enacted by employees with the right mentality, skill sets, attitudes and capabilities. However, there is a paucity of empirical research on how such changes affect employee-level outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThe authors theorize that job enrichment and role stress act as countervailing forces during the manufacturer's service transition, with implications for employee satisfaction. The authors test the hypotheses using a sample of 21,869 employees from 201 American manufacturers that declared revenues from services over a 10-year period.FindingsThe authors find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the firm's level of service infusion and individual employee satisfaction, which is flatter for front-end staff. This relationship differs in shape and/or magnitude between firms, highlighting the role of unobserved firm-level idiosyncratic factors.Practical implicationsServitized manufacturers, especially those in the later stage of their transition (i.e. when services start to account for more than 50% of annual revenues), should try to ameliorate their employees' role-induced stress to counter a drop in satisfaction.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies to examine systematically the relationship between servitization and individual employee satisfaction. It shows that back-end employees in manufacturing firms are considerably affected by an increasing emphasis on services, while past literature has almost exclusively been concerned with front-end staff.