Daniel F. Lynch

Public Policy and Global Supply Chain Capabilities and Performance: A Resource-Based View

In increasingly competitive and global markets, public policy should be customer focused in terms of stressing resources, capabilities, and performance that are most important to the private sector and to other stakeholders. Although this requires a balancing act, it will help ensure successful public/private partnerships, performance outcomes that are customer driven, and planning and policy oversight that is performance based. The authors investigate the relative importance and availability of supply chain capabilities and performance measures for more than 3500 firms in three global regions: North America, Europe, and the Pacific Basin. The authors present additional analyses for best-practice firms that score the highest on an excellence index. The study finds that public policy–enabled customer service or, more broadly, demand-oriented performance capabilities may confer greater competitive advantages than cost- and supply-oriented performance capabilities, though both are important. The study findings have important implications for international public policy, such as trade policies, and for linking policy priorities with private sector requirements for specific capabilities, resources, and performance. The authors discuss additional managerial implications and recommendations for the integration of international marketing and global supply chain strategies with supporting marketing capabilities of standardization, adaptation, or customization and for governmental planning, policy formulation, and data availability.

Buyer Supplier Perspectives on Supply Chain Relationships

Purpose – The paper aims to employ transaction cost theory and social exchange theory to compare how buyers and suppliers perceive relationship mechanisms. The paper also explains the antecedents and dynamics of relationship performance by comparing buyer and supplier perceptions of the same relationships. The paper specifically focuses on the issue of relationship success and test the hypothesis that the antecedents of perceived relationship success for buyers differ from those of suppliers within supply chain relationships.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a study of the supply chain relationships of a major ICT company where matched pairs of buyers and suppliers were surveyed on the nature of their relationships. The survey instrument drew from previously published constructs on key relationship dimensions such as trust, commitment, power, communication, uncertainty and performance. A series of nested measurement models were then developed and tested for the two groups – buyers and su...

Communication media selection in buyer-supplier relationships

Purpose – In successful purchasing relationships, effective communication is a key factor. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the choice of communication media is affected by different stages in the relationship development process and by different purchasing contexts: product and service purchasing.Design/methodology/approach – The study initially reviews the literature on inter‐organizational communication and purchasing relationships. In order to explore the research question, data were gathered through semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with purchasing managers, buyers and their suppliers in three product and three service purchasing relationships.Findings – The study identifies a relationship development framework that influences the communication media selection in two purchasing contexts. It confirms that communication media selection is affected by the communication needs of the participants, the stage of relationship development, and the purchasing context.Research limitations/impli...