Stephen K. Kim

Cooperate “and” compete: coopetition strategy in retailer‐supplier relationships

Purpose – This study aims to examine the strategic implications and managerial outcomes of the concurrent use of cooperation and competition in vertical channel relationships.Design/methodology/approach – This study employs a structured questionnaire to gather data regarding vertical channel relationships in China.Findings – Whereas the academic literature has emphasized cooperation between channel members because of the interdependence between them, in reality, retailers may accept competition as just another part of doing business with suppliers.Research limitations/implications – The outcome variables used may not be comprehensive. In particular, the authors choose the flexibility of channel resources to stand for private benefits and joint benefits to represent common benefits, and though these variables certainly represent the intended benefits of the ambidextrous strategy, it remains to be seen whether other benefits may emerge for the exchange parties in vertical relationships.Practical implication...

Search for Alternatives and Collaboration with Incumbents: Two-Sided Sourcing Behavior in Business Markets*

Sourcing strategies in business markets have been considered separately and the practice of two-sided sourcing behavior—engaging in search for alternative suppliers and collaboration with an incumbent supplier—has not been examined. To fill that gap, we first identify boundary conditions under which the poor performance of an incumbent supplier intensifies an original equipment manufacturers (OEM) search and collaboration. Then, we examine how an OEMs two-sided sourcing behavior influences one of the critical elements of sourcing performance: the responsiveness of the incumbent supplier. Our proposed hypotheses were tested with data from a national survey of 539 OEM purchasing managers in the Japanese electronics industry. The analysis results indicate three main findings. First, two environmental conditions—pace of technological change and volume uncertainty—have contrasting influences on the link between incumbent supplier performance and an OEMs search and collaboration. While uncertainty from the upstream channel (pace of technological change) enhances an OEMs search and collaboration, uncertainty from the downstream channel (volume uncertainty) lowers an OEMs search and collaboration. Second, an OEMs dependence on its incumbent supplier has differential effects: an OEM reduces search as its dependence on incumbent supplier increases, while it enhances collaboration as its dependence on incumbent supplier increases. Third, while search alone has a negative effect on responsiveness of an incumbent supplier, engaging in two-sided sourcing behavior (i.e., combining search with collaboration) has a positive effect on responsiveness of the incumbent supplier.

Discriminating IT Governance

The information technology (IT) governance literature predominantly explains firms’ IT governance choices, but not their strategic consequences. We develop the idea that a firm’s IT governance choices induce adeptness at strategically exploiting IT only when they are discriminatingly aligned with its departments’ knowledge outside their specialty. Discriminating means that governing the two undertheorized classes of IT assets—apps and infrastructure—requires “peripheral” knowledge in different departments. Analyses of data from 105 firms support our middle-range theory.

Concurrent IT Sourcing: Mechanisms and Contingent Advantages

Abstract A growing trend to simultaneously insource and outsource the same information technology (IT) activities (“concurrent IT sourcing”) has not yet received research attention. Although it is widespread and recent empirical studies have detected that in-house IT can complement IT outsourcing, when and how concurrent IT sourcing pays off is not yet understood. This study introduces the notion of concurrent IT sourcing. It then develops two interrelated ideas: concurrent IT sourcing simultaneously enhances in-house and outsourced IT performance: (a) via distinctive mechanisms, but (b) only when vendors’ IT capabilities complement the client’s. Econometric tests using survey data from 233 firms support these ideas. Our novel contribution is to explain when and how concurrent IT sourcing enhances a client firm’s inhouse and outsourced IT performance. The explanatory mechanisms for outsourced IT performance are socialization and modeling of clients’ in-house IT practices by vendors; for in-house IT performance they are knowledge spillovers and ratcheting. For practice, our study shows that when a firm’s in-house capabilities complement its IT vendors’ capabilities, firms can simultaneously outsource and insource the same IT activities to enhance both in-house and outsourced IT performance.

Enforcement Structures in Business-to-Business Exchange Relationships: An Exploratory Study

While the channels literature has long been concerned with governance issues, there have been relatively few empirical studies to simultaneously examine the extent to which self-enforcement (private ordering) versus court enforcement (public ordering) are actually being practiced by businesses, as opposed to the simple reliance upon marketplace competition (using multiple sources of supply and low purchasing allocations) (Telser 1980; Klein 1996; Koss and Eaton 1997; Buvik and John 2000; Wathne and Heide 2000).

Supplier Diversity Programs and their Impact on Purchasing Agent Negotiation Strategies: A Role Theoretic Model

Government contracting and procurement practices that include preference programs for women and minority-owned business enterprises (WMBE) and supplier diversity initiatives in industry are commonplace in the U.S. and have sprung up in other nations like Australia and Canada, but with a focus on aboriginal business enterprises (ABE). An interesting incongruity exists however. Although WMBE procurement preference and supplier diversity programs are commonplace in the U.S. and articles about these efforts regularly appear in the business press and trade publications, this topic has received scant attention in the academic literature (Carter, Auskalnis & Ketchum 1999; Krause, Ragatz & Hughley 1999). Within this limited literature there are several reports that many of these programs have produced disappointing results and frustration (Bates 1985; Bates & Williams 1996; Dollinger & Daily 1989; Pearson, Fawcett & Cooper 1993; Singleton 1995). Among these critical studies, several common themes can be noted. Many have reported that WMBEs face impediments to success that are structural (e.g., firm size, access to financing) and communications-related (e.g., inadequate access to bid requests, failure to disseminate information on WMBEs to purchasing staff). Other studies have noted impediments that are more related to the social context. These include findings of the perceived difficulty by WMBEs in developing strong buyer-supplier relationships, opportunistic behavior by purchasing agents, and the sometime hostile environments encountered (Dollinger & Daily 1989; Pearson, Fawcett & Cooper 1993).

Plural Governance in Industrial Purchasing: An Exploratory Study of Combinations in Actual Use

During recent decades, researchers have come to recognize that exchange parties often do not rely on just a single governance mechanism, but instead may blend multiple governance mechanisms to achieve the desired control. Bradach and Eccles (1989) were among the first to discuss the use of plural governance mechanisms and examined three types of governance mechanisms — price, authority, and trust — which roughly map onto Williamson’s (1985) typology of markets, hierarchies, and hybrids/intermediate forms. In the marketing literature, Heide (1994) has conceptualized a trilogy of interfirm governance forms — market, unilateral/hierarchical, and bilateral. More recently, Wathne and Heide (2000) have recognized that four governance strategies — monitoring, incentives, selection, and socialization — can be used to manage opportunism in interfirm exchanges.