Minhao Zhang

Embracing supply chain agility: an investigation in the electronics industry

Purpose – This paper aims to identify the antecedents of firm’s supply chain agility (SC agility) and how SC agility impacts on firm’s performance. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a comprehensive literature review, a conceptual model was proposed, in which the interrelated hypotheses were tested by structural equation modelling methodology using a dataset collected from 266 Chinese electronics firms. Findings – Initially, it was found that SC integration and external learning positively influenced SC agility. Second, the results indicated that firm’s performance is positively impacted by SC agility. Moreover, SC agility also fully mediated the effect of SC integration on firm’s performance and the effect of external learning on firm’s performance. Research limitations/implications – The generalizability of this research sample might be the major limitation of this study. Therefore, future research can adopt other industry sectors samples, such as automobile manufacturing, or other country samples t...

Insight from the horsemeat scandal: Exploring the consumers’ opinion of tweets toward Tesco

– Social media has become an important part of daily interpersonal communication in contemporary society. The purpose of this paper is to explore the attitudes of UK consumers by identifying the hidden information in tweets, and provide a framework which can assist industry practitioners in managing social media data. , – Using a large-scale dataset of tweets relating to the Horsemeat scandal of 2013, a comprehensive data analysis framework, which comprises multidimensional scaling and sentiment analysis, alongside other methods, was applied to explore customers’ opinions. , – Making jokes in social media was a main trend in the tweets relating to Tesco during the Horsemeat scandal. Consumer sentiments were overall negative and burgers were the most mentioned product in the week-long period after the story broke. The posting of tweets was correlated with the timing of news coverage, which indicates that the traditional media is still crucial to public opinion formation. , – This paper presents a progressive tweet-mining framework that can serve as a tool for academia and practitioners in crisis management. The proposed framework indicates the significant importance of timely categorising the topics, identifying the sentiment of tweets and understanding the changes of consumer opinions over time in a crisis. , – The research presented in this paper is one of the limited social media research to focus on a UK food fraud issue and adds to the limited body of literature investigating consumer social media use from the side of industry practitioners.

Building relationship innovation in global collaborative partnerships : big data analytics and traditional organizational powers

This study examines how relationship innovation can be developed in global collaborative partnerships (alliances, joint ventures, mergers, and acquisitions). The recently emerging theory of big data analytics linked with traditional organizational powers has attracted a growing interest, but surprisingly little research has been devoted to this important and complex topic. Therefore, after developing the theoretical foundations, our study empirically quantifies the links between the theoretical constructs based on the data collected from chief executive officers, managing directors, and heads of departments who work in contemporary global data-and-information driven collaborative partnerships. The results from structural equation modeling indicate that the relationship innovation depends on the power of big data analytics and non-mediated powers (NMP, expert and referent). The power of big data analytics also mediates the correlation between NMP and relationship innovation. However, mediated powers (coercive and manipulative) negatively affect the power of big data analytics and relationship innovation. The interaction effects further depict that analytically powered partnerships have better relationship innovation compared with those which focus less on the analytical power. Consequently, the contributions of this study provide a deeper understanding of mechanisms of how modern collaborative partnerships can use big data analytics and traditional organizational powers to co-create relationship innovation.

An investigation of social media data during a product recall scandal

ABSTRACT As social media has become an important part of modern daily life, users often share product opinions online and these tend to spike when large companies undergo crises. This paper investigates customer online responses to a large company crisis by uncovering hidden insights in social media comments and presents a framework for handling social media data and crisis management. Analysis of textual Facebook data from users responding to the 2013 horsemeat scandal is presented. In this study, we used a novel comprehensive data analysis framework alongside a text-mining framework to objectively classify and understand customer perceptions during this horsemeat scandal. This framework provides an effective approach for investigating customer perception during a company crisis and measures the effectiveness of crisis management practices which the company has adopted. Our analyses show that social media can provide important insights into customer behaviour during crisis communications.

Examining green supply chain management and financial performance: roles of social control and environmental dynamism

The literature examining the relationship between green supply chain management and firm performance has expanded greatly in recent years. Although researchers maintain that green supply chain management can bring positive financial performance, to date they have ignored the moderating role of the social control mechanism, especially in the context of China. Drawing on social exchange theory, this study aims to contribute to the literature in this field by proposing social control as an effective mechanism to strengthen the impact of green supply chain management on firms’ financial performance. Today, most empirical literature in the field of green supply chain management adopts the static view and overlooks the contextual factors. This study addresses the gap by investigating the green supply chain management in an environment characterized by frequently unavoidable disruptions, and the effectiveness of social control that accommodates this complexity and dynamism. By examining green supply chain management under conditions of environmental dynamism, this study contributes to the literature of interface of green supply chain and resilience. Using a sample of 185 Chinese manufacturers, the theoretical model is empirically verified. The research findings indicate that in a dynamic environment, the joint effect of social control and green supply chain management practices is positive and significant. This paper also discusses the theoretical contribution and managerial implications of the study, outlines the research limitations, and provides recommendations for future research.

Using GPS Geo-tagged Social Media Data and Geodemographics to Investigate Social Differences: A Twitter Pilot Study

This article outlines a new method for investigating social position through geo-tagged Twitter data, specifically through the application of the geodemographic classification system Mosaic. The method involves the identification of a given tweeter’s likely location of residence from the ‘geo-tag’ attached to their tweet. Using this high-resolution geographic information, each individual tweet is then attributed a geodemographic classification. This article shows that the specific application of geodemographics for discerning between different types of tweeters is problematic in some ways, but that the general process of classifying tweeters according to their position in geographical space is viable and represents a powerful new method for discerning the social position of tweeters. Further research is required in this area, as there is great potential in employing the mobile global positioning system data appended to digital by-product data to explore the intersections between geographical space and social position.