Stanley E. Griffis

Multilevel Challenges and Opportunities in Social Capital Research

Social capital refers to the resources derived from social relationships. Although the concept of social capital has been applied at the individual, group, and organizational levels of analysis, researchers have yet to fully embrace social capital’s potential as a multilevel lens through which we might better understand management and organizational phenomena. With a central objective of advancing social capital’s potential as a multilevel theoretical perspective, the authors make two contributions to the management literature. First, the authors comprehensively review two decades of management research to highlight how social capital has been empirically applied across levels of analysis. Second, based on the shortcomings and challenges revealed through the literature review, the authors identify and discuss avenues for future multilevel research, including suggestions for both macro and micro researchers.

The effects of triangle inequality on the vehicle routing problem

Routing problems often utilize experimental networks to represent real world scenarios. However most ignore the inclusion of triangle inequality violations, a phenomenon resulting from delays or rounding errors within a network. This work evaluates the effect of both frequency – the number of violations – and severity – the degree of intensity of a violation – of triangle inequality and evaluates both solution quality and solution time based on Simulated Annealing, Ant Colony Optimization and Savings Algorithm methods. Findings indicate that while both frequency and severity degrade solution quality, increased levels of frequency and severity together result in significant adverse affects to solution quality. Solution time, however, is not impacted by the presence of triangle inequality violations within the network. This information should encourage practitioners to identify delays and maintain the presence of triangle inequality violations in a network to ensure accuracy of solution quality.

Assessing Antecedents of Socially Responsible Supplier Selection in Three Global Supply Chain Contexts

A number of highly publicized, controversial lapses in social responsibility within global supply chains have forced managers and scholars to reexamine long-held perspectives on supplier selection. Extending Carter and Jennings� department-level study of purchasing social responsibility, our research assesses the role of supply managers� ethical intentions and three key antecedents that drive socially responsible supplier selection. Comparing evidence from firms operating in China, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates, we identify three key drivers of supply managers� ethical intentions and examine both their direct and indirect impacts on socially responsible supplier selection. We find differential support for the predictor relationships on supply manager ethical intentions across national contexts and mediated versus nonmediated models. These observations bear important implications for firms conducting global supply management.

Making sense of transient responses in simulation studies

Traditional simulation modelling focuses upon the analysis of steady-state data. This focus may not be appropriate, however, for the study of transient responses – data reflecting some form of disruption or change in the system norms. Transient responses are often encountered when dealing with new product introductions, changes in production systems, or supply chain disruptions. In these situations, it is the transient response, how the system responds to these changes as well as the tactics and strategies used to deal with these changes, that tend to be of the greatest interest. Unfortunately, current approaches that focus on analysing such responses are limited. This paper introduces a new approach for analysing transient responses – one that merges outlier detection, a time series analysis tool, with simulation modelling. This combined approach allows the researcher to identify those factors that have the greatest impact upon operations during these transient conditions. Using a simulated supply chain disruption to illustrate the potential of the approach, it is shown that the new approach expands the applicability of simulation and enables certain types of problems to be investigated with confidence not previously provided.

Supply chain risk and resilience: theory building through structured experiments and simulation

The research literature of supply chain risk and resilience is at a critical developmental stage. Studies have established the importance of these topics both to researchers and practitioners. They also have identified factors contributing to risk, the impact of risk and disruptions on performance, and the strategies and tactics used to build the capacity for supply chain resilience. Although these efforts can provide support for constructing a theory of risk and resilience, researchers are currently restricted in their ability to build such a theory by the difficulty of collecting the necessary data. This paper contributes to this literature development effort by summarising prior research reviews and developing a three-component framework aimed at helping researchers to build better theories. This is accomplished through combining structured experimental design with discrete-event simulations of supply chains. The result is a methodology that allows researchers to develop better understanding of the factors that link a disruption to its impact on supply chain performance through both direct and interaction effects. Following the methodology development, the paper concludes with an example using the factors of shock interarrival time, supply chain connectivity and buffer stocks to illustrate the potential for contributing to the theory-building process.

Project Complexity and Bonding Social Capital in Network Organizations

This study conceptually and empirically explores how project complexity and bonding forms of social capital influence performance outcomes in network organizations. Specifically, we focus on how bonding social capital within network organizations—measured as frequency of collaboration and degree of network coupling—can influence project performance outcomes both (a) directly by facilitating cooperative interaction and (b) contingently by mitigating the transaction costs associated with the management of complex projects. Using longitudinal data on contracted construction jobs to test our hypotheses, we find that project complexity is negatively related to project performance and bonding social capital has both direct and moderating effects. Contrary to expectations, however, we find that the different types of bonding social capital affect project performance uniquely and not always in an improved direction. Our findings suggest a more multifarious relationship than previous social capital research might imply.

Military applications of location analysis

Over time, the decision-making needs of military commanders have had a strong influence upon the development of the field of operations research and analytic problem solving. The challenge of correctly positioning military units and resources within a geographical setting has vexed commanders and their staffs for thousands of years. However, it is only in the last 70 years that optimization methods have developed to the point where analysts can apply them to accomplish such goals. Along the way toward solving these narrowly defined military-focused problems, the advancement of the field has benefitted as generalizable techniques are extended beyond their origins to countless non-military applications. For example, military analysts first solved complex problems regarding routes for convoys of ships, code breaking, and materiel allocation mathematically during World War II ultimately leading to the development of linear and mathematical programming techniques by wartime scientists. Location analysis knowledge was similarly benefitted by the war, as commanders required the ability to spatially position munitions to destroy a target and covering a search area to find the enemy. The benefit is reciprocal however, as military strategy and planning since World War II have literally been redefined by the operations research field’s ability to solve larger and more complex problems.