Frank G. Adams

A global exploration of Big Data in the supply chain

Purpose Journals in business logistics, operations management, supply chain management, and business strategy have initiated ongoing calls for Big Data research and its impact on research and practice. Currently, no extant research has defined the concept fully. The purpose of this paper is to develop an industry grounded definition of Big Data by canvassing supply chain managers across six nations. The supply chain setting defines Big Data as inclusive of four dimensions: volume, velocity, variety, and veracity. The study further extracts multiple concepts that are important to the future of supply chain relationship strategy and performance. These outcomes provide a starting point and extend a call for theoretically grounded and paradigm-breaking research on managing business-to-business relationships in the age of Big Data. Design/methodology/approach A native categories qualitative method commonly employed in sociology allows each executive respondent to provide rich, specific data. This approach reduces interviewer bias while examining 27 companies across six industrialized and industrializing nations. This is the first study in supply chain management and logistics (SCMLs) to use the native category approach. Findings This study defines Big Data by developing four supporting dimensions that inform and ground future SCMLs research; details ten key success factors/issues; and discusses extensive opportunities for future research. Research limitations/implications This study provides a central grounding of the term, dimensions, and issues related to Big Data in supply chain research. Practical implications Supply chain managers are provided with a peer-specific definition and unified dimensions of Big Data. The authors detail key success factors for strategic consideration. Finally, this study notes differences in relational priorities concerning these success factors across different markets, and points to future complexity in managing supply chain and logistics relationships. Originality/value There is currently no central grounding of the term, dimensions, and issues related to Big Data in supply chain research. For the first time, the authors address subjects related to how supply chain partners employ Big Data across the supply chain, uncover Big Data’s potential to influence supply chain performance, and detail the obstacles to developing Big Data’s potential. In addition, the study introduces the native category qualitative interview approach to SCMLs researchers.

Retail service‐based operant resources and market performance

Purpose – The service‐dominant logic (SDL) concept is reshaping the view of business‐to‐business research and practice. Thus, understanding the role of knowledge‐based operant resources, a key component of the SDL paradigm, in the ability of supply chains to shape competitive advantage and performance outcomes is vital. Further, operant resources have a hierarchical structure, with differing effects in building value for a supply chain. This research seeks to explore the effects of different levels of hierarchical operant resources in a retail supply chain setting.Design/methodology/approach – A survey was collected from 300 retailing informants who deal with both key suppliers and customers. The data were examined using hierarchical regression to explore the influence of internal and external operant resources on market performance, subject to the moderating effects of top management support and relationship quality.Findings – There is a positive relationship between internal and external operant resourc...

Bridging the gap: An exploration of how DMO managers use education to overcome challenges

Place branding practices are increasingly taking place within public sector organisations, yet destination marketing organisation managers are insufficiently researched through a lens of managerial theory. Extending previous empirical research on DMO management obstacles, this study contributes to the literature by reporting results of interviews with DMO managers throughout a Southern state, and finds that managers face four major challenges: personnel, technological, political, and educational. The educational challenge manifests in how DMO managers respond to the other three obstacles, extending knowledge regarding how DMO managers justify their organisation’s existence and mission to potentially sceptical audiences.

@Size vs. #Impact: Social Media Engagement Differences Amongst Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

To say social media is popular amongst online users vastly understates the sheer volume of social media activity that takes place on a daily basis. For instance, the users of Facebook, the largest social media site in terms of size and activity, generate more than 2.5 billion items of new content per day, including over 250 million photos, and 10 billion instant messages sent between users (Facebook 2013). On the surface, Facebook users also appear to be highly engaged with the platform. According to Ajmera (2013), 26 % of Facebook’s 1.36 billion users check their account more than five times a day. While Facebook remains the most popular site across nearly all demographics, Twitter (285 million) and Instagram (150 million) are the second and third largest social networking sites, respectively (Pew Research 2013). However, despite their smaller size, Twitter and Instagram have recently overtaken Facebook in purchase decision influence for the teen and young adult demographic (Pipar, Jaffary, and Company 2013). In fact, Instagram, the smallest of the three major social media sites in terms of size, was the most influential.

Can Service Climate Detract from Employee Performance? The Role of Experience in Optimizing Satisfaction and Performance Outcomes

In this research, we test the curvilinear relationships between service climate perceptions and two employee performance outcomes. Specifically, we propose that while service climate can be beneficial, high levels can actually be detrimental to customer satisfaction and sales performance. Additionally, we propose that a global assessment of employee experience that captures knowledge, skills, and abilities, or KSAs, moderates these curvilinear relationships by providing a means to balance outcome goals. We test our theory using data obtained from 312 employees in a service setting, which we pair with their managers’ assessments of their sales performance as well as satisfaction ratings from their customers. Our results reveal two things: (1) an inverted U-shaped relationship between service climate and sales performance and (2) the level of experience moderates the relationship. These findings suggest that more experienced employees are better able to adjust behaviors to achieve high levels of performance than less experienced employees. Based on these results, we offer theoretical implications and applications for managerial practice.

Green Logistics Competency: A Resource Hierarchy View of Supply Chain Sustainability

Environmental supply chain sustainability has become a critical focus for firms, yet both scholars and practitioners seem to struggle with alignment between logistics service requirements and environmental concerns. This conceptual research examines the problem as an issue in properly leveraging the cultural antecedents of both supply chain and sustainability capabilities. A synthesis of the known literature proposes that a market orientation-driven resource hierarchy view model of relationships between supply chain and environmental orientations may provide a means by which firms can increase both environmental sustainability and performance outcomes.

The Complementary Perspective of System of Systems in Collaboration, Integration, and Logistics: A Value-Chain Based Paradigm of Supply Chain Management

The importance and complexity of the problems associated with coordinating multiple organizations to configure value propositions for customers has drawn the attention of multiple disciplines. In an effort to clarify and consolidate terms, this conceptual research examines both supply chain management (SCM) and system of systems (SoS) literature to postulate, from a value-chain perspective, what roles integration and collaboration play in helping supply chains satisfy customer requirements. A literature review analysis was used to identify the commonalities and differences between supply chain management and system of systems approaches to examining interfirm coordination of value creation efforts. Although a framework of integration and collaboration roles in value creation is proposed, further empirical testing of the concept is required to substantiate initial conclusions. The concepts proposed may help clarify where strategic and operational managers need to focus their efforts in coordinating supply chain member firms. The incorporation of SoS engineering into the supply chain field will draw the linkage between the constituent principles, and concepts of Systems Theory as appropriate for the supply chain management field. This is the first effort to reconcile two separate but parallel scholarship streams examining the coordination of multiple organizations in value creation. This research shows that there are some methodologies, principles, and methods from the SoS field that can supplement supply chain management research. Mainly due to a unit of analysis issue, systems based approaches have not been in the mainstream of supply chain management field development.

Cool, Social Media, and Marketing Communications Strategy: An Anarchy-Network Logic of Value Creation

Scholars and practitioners have been frustrated in the attempt to identify a viable strategy to capitalize on the potential marketing applications presented by social networking media. The very nature of social networking media may render long accepted assumptions about how desirable customer attention is captured and leveraged obsolete. Relying on recent developments in Critical Service Logic literature, along with theories stemming from research in fashion marketing, secondary data is examined to illuminate how this powerful new medium may operate, and how it may change the manner in which marketing communications strategy is conducted.

Knowledge Creation and Firm Performance: The Role of Process Integration in Collaborative Relationships

In the increasingly competitive global marketplace, firms seek to maximize competitive advantage by collaborating with other firms in business-to-business (B2B) networks rather than competing as independent entities (Dyer and Singh 1998). Sharing unique knowledge is a central component of collaborative relationships (Vargo and Lusch 2004), resulting in the creation of new knowledge resources (Kahn et al. 2006). The successful exchange of knowledge resources between collaborating entities requires the integration of relevant processes (Teece et al. 2007), which can occur internally between functional units of the firm (Closs and Savitskie 2003) and externally between network partners (Richey et al. 2010).

Supply Chain Governance Tensions: A Qualitative Exploration of Business-to-Business Relationship Structures

How and why firms jointly compete to achieve superior performance has been examined in marketing strategy by both relational governance and supply chain management scholars, who have approached the issue from different perspectives and offered different, but not necessarily exclusive, findings. Recent efforts to reconcile their theories and results suggest looking at the issue from a broader perspective. Based on a qualitative study of managers that interface with their firm’s trade partners, the authors propose a framework that views relational governance and supply chain management constructs as a combination of unilateral capabilities, collaborative capabilities and environmental factors.