Contextual Trustworthiness of Organizational Partners: Evidence from Nine School Networks

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha M. Keppler ◽  
Karen R. Smilowitz ◽  
Paul M. Leonardi
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Problem Definition ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
High Quality ◽  
School Networks ◽  
12Th Grade ◽  
Service Relationships ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
The Relationship

Problem definition: Trustworthy partners in procurement and service relationships are an asset. How can organizations discern trustworthy from untrustworthy partners, especially early on, so as to not waste time or resources on bad relationships? Academic/practical relevance: Like prior studies, we take the perspective that organizations rarely know whether a partner is trustworthy, but also that organizations often have some evidence of a partner’s trustworthiness, even before interacting. We argue a qualitative study is needed to understand how people discern a partner’s trustworthiness and the consequences of initial perceptions on the relationship trajectory. Methodology: We conduct an interview-based study of how people discern trustworthy partners in a setting where doing so is challenging: the education sector. Kindergarten-through-12th-grade schools must choose outside partners to rely on for resources or services the school cannot afford. Potential partners are numerous and of variable trustworthiness. Results: We find people use contextual factors as evidence of a potential partner’s trustworthiness, such as the partner’s institutional affiliations, physical proximity, and relationships with other schools. Sometimes the evidence indicates that a partner acts intrinsically trustworthily, regardless of these contextual factors. In other cases, the evidence indicates a partner acts contextually trustworthily, meaning partners follow through in some conditions but not others. Intrinsically trustworthy partners provide valuable but standardized resources or services. Contextually trustworthy partners provide the competitive advantage: customized resources that are not easily accessible by other schools. Managerial implications: People in organizations identify trustworthy partners via contextual factors, which helps them determine whether a partner acts trustworthily independent of context or conditional on context. The value of intrinsically trustworthy partners derives from their low risk and high quality, whereas the value of contextually trustworthy partners derives from their willingness to customize resources or services to some—but not all—organizations.

Symbolic Awards in Buyer–Supplier Relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Beer ◽  
Hyun-Soo Ahn ◽  
Stephen Leider
Keyword(s):  
Laboratory Experiments ◽  
Problem Definition ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Bottom Line ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Behavioral Mechanisms ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
High Effort

Problem definition: Giving out a symbolic “supplier of the year” or “outstanding supplier” award can be beneficial for a buyer as it may incentivize a supplier to exert higher efforts. However, when a good supplier is scarce, the award announces which supplier is particularly good and may increase the cost of building and maintaining the relationship. This paper studies both positive and negative effects of a symbolic award and offers explanations on underlying behavioral mechanisms. Academic/practical relevance: We show that symbolic awards can effectively incentivize suppliers to provide high effort, improving a buyer’s bottom line. This is particularly relevant in cases in which certain aspects of a buyer–supplier relationship are not contractible and suppliers have discretion over the quality provided. The award format significantly influences the award’s effectiveness. Methodology: We develop a game-theoretical model that captures a supplier’s utility for the award in a competitive setting and test the predictions of the model with laboratory experiments. Results: Our experimental results confirm that private symbolic awards have motivating effects and lead to higher buyer profits. When the awards are public, this profit premium diminishes as buyers pay higher prices to get the good suppliers. When the buyer is given the option to make the award public or private, buyers prefer that awards are public over private, anticipating a negative supplier response to their choice of the private award format. Managerial implications: Expressing praise or gratitude for a supplier’s efforts can be highly beneficial for a buyer. However, when there is scarcity of good suppliers, buyers should expect increased competition and accompany the award with efforts to preserve the relationship. Finally, if buyers choose to offer a distinctive award format, private recognitions may be perceived as greedy or self-interested and backfire.

Negotiating Government-to-Government Food Importing Contracts: A Nash Bargaining Framework

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liying Mu ◽  
Bin Hu ◽  
A. Amarender Reddy ◽  
Srinagesh Gavirneni
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Developing Nations ◽  
Problem Definition ◽  
Pool Size ◽  
Nash Bargaining ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
Negotiation Model ◽  
Multiple Sourcing ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
Better Than

Problem definition: Inspired by India’s challenges in importing pulses, we study the negotiation of government-to-government food importing contracts, with a focus on ad hoc and forward negotiations with multiple suppliers (henceforth referred to as multiple-sourcing negotiations). Academic/practical relevance: We are the first to comprehensively study ad hoc and forward multiple-sourcing negotiations for food importing. Such problems are widespread, especially in developing nations, and thus the research can be relevant to the wellbeing of large underprivileged populations. Methodology: We develop an analytical negotiation model in the Nash bargaining framework and adopt the Nash-in-Nash framework to analyze multiple-sourcing negotiations. Results: We find that while forward negotiations are not necessarily better than ad hoc negotiations for the buyer, it would be true with sufficiently many suppliers. When facing a supplier pool, we show that it may be optimal to mix forward and ad hoc suppliers. In general, fewer suppliers should be assigned as ad hoc as the pool size increases. We also find that adding a hybrid supplier (engaged in a forward negotiation with an ad hoc negotiation as the fallback option) may be better or worse than adding a forward supplier in the presence of other suppliers. Managerial implications: Our findings inform how a food importer should strategically utilize ad hoc and forward negotiations with its suppliers to improve the outcome. The work may help countries’ food importing policymaking and strategies and may improve the wellbeing of large underprivileged populations.

AI and Procurement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruomeng Cui ◽  
Meng Li ◽  
Shichen Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Price Discrimination ◽  
Recommendation System ◽  
Wholesale Price ◽  
Problem Definition ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
Trading Company ◽  
Smart Control ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Price Quotes

Problem definition: In this research, we study how buyers’ use of artificial intelligence (AI) affects suppliers’ price quoting strategies. Specifically, we study the impact of automation—that is, the buyer uses a chatbot to automatically inquire about prices instead of asking in person—and the impact of smartness—that is, the buyer signals the use of a smart AI algorithm in selecting the supplier. Academic/practical relevance: In a world advancing toward AI, we explore how AI creates and delivers value in procurement. AI has two unique abilities: automation and smartness, which are associated with physical machines or software that enable us to operate more efficiently and effectively. Methodology: We collaborate with a trading company to run a field experiment on an online platform in which we compare suppliers’ wholesale price quotes across female, male, and chatbot buyer types under AI and no recommendation conditions. Results: We find that, when not equipped with a smart control, there is price discrimination against chatbot buyers who receive a higher wholesale price quote than human buyers. In fact, without smartness, automation alone receives the highest quoted wholesale price. However, signaling the use of a smart recommendation system can effectively reduce suppliers’ price quote for chatbot buyers. We also show that AI delivers the most value when buyers adopt automation and smartness simultaneously in procurement. Managerial implications: Our results imply that automation is not very valuable when implemented without smartness, which in turn suggests that building smartness is necessary before considering high levels of autonomy. Our study unlocks the optimal steps that buyers could adopt to develop AI in procurement processes.

scholarly journals Centralized and Decentralized Warehouse Logistics Collaboration

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 812-831 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiman Ding ◽  
Philip M. Kaminsky
Keyword(s):  
Lower Bound ◽  
Transportation Cost ◽  
Problem Definition ◽  
Cost Ratio ◽  
Computational Studies ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
Grocery Industry ◽  
Ordering Policy ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
The Cost

Problem definition: We bound the value of collaboration in a decentralized multisupplier multiretailer setting, where several suppliers ship to several retailers through a shared warehouse, and outbound trucks from the warehouse contain the products of multiple suppliers. Academic/practical relevance: In an emerging trend in the grocery industry, multiple suppliers and retailers share a warehouse to facilitate horizontal collaboration, lower transportation costs, and increase delivery frequencies. Thus far, these so-called mixing and consolidation centers are operated in a decentralized manner, with little effort to coordinate shipments from multiple suppliers with shipments to multiple retailers. Facilitating collaboration in this setting would be challenging (both technically and in terms of the level of trust that would be necessary), so it is useful to understand the potential gains of collaboration. Methodology: We extend the classic one-warehouse multiretailer analysis to incorporate multiple suppliers and per-truck outbound transportation cost from the warehouse and develop a cost lower bound on centralized operation as benchmark. We then analyze decentralized versions of the system, in which each retailer and each supplier maximizes his or her own utility in a variety of settings, and we analytically bound the ratio of the cost of decentralized to centralized operation to bound the loss resulting from decentralization. Results: We find analytical bounds on the performance of several decentralized policies. The best, a decentralized zero-inventory ordering policy, has a cost ratio when compared with a lower bound on the centralized policy of no more than 3/2. In computational studies, we find that costs of decentralized policies are even closer to those of centralized policies. Managerial implications: Easy-to-implement decentralized policies are efficient and effective in this setting, suggesting that centralization (and thus a potentially complex and expensive coordination effort) is unlikely to result in significant benefits.

scholarly journals Motivating Supplier Social Responsibility Under Incomplete Visibility

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 1268-1286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Kraft ◽  
León Valdés ◽  
Yanchong Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Investment Decision ◽  
Problem Definition ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Game Theoretic Model

Problem definition: We examine how a profit-driven firm (she) can motivate better social responsibility (SR) practices by a supplier (he) when these practices cannot be perfectly observed by the firm. We focus on the firm’s investment in the supplier’s SR capabilities. To capture the influence of consumer demands, we incorporate the potential for SR information to be disclosed by the firm or revealed by a third party. Academic/practical relevance: Most firms have limited visibility into the SR practices of their suppliers. However, there is little research on how a firm under incomplete visibility should (i) invest to improve a supplier’s SR practices and (ii) disclose SR information to consumers. We address this gap. Methodology: We develop a game-theoretic model with asymmetric information to study a supply chain with one supplier and one firm. The firm makes her investment decision given incomplete information about the supplier’s current SR practices. We analyze and compare two settings: the firm does not disclose versus she discloses SR information to the consumers. Results: The firm should invest a high (low) amount in the supplier’s capabilities if the information she observes suggests the supplier’s current SR practices are poor (good). She should always be more aggressive with her investment when disclosing (versus not disclosing). This more aggressive strategy ensures better supplier SR practices under disclosure. When choosing between disclosing and not disclosing, the firm most likely prefers not to disclose when the supplier’s current SR practices seem to be average. Managerial implications: (i) Greater visibility helps the firm to better tailor her investment to the level of support needed. (ii) Better visibility also makes the firm more “truthful” in her disclosure, whereas increased third-party scrutiny makes her more “cautious.” (iii) Mandating disclosure is most beneficial for SR when the suppliers’ current practices seem to be average.

Surge Pricing and Two-Sided Temporal Responses in Ride Hailing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin Hu ◽  
Ming Hu ◽  
Han Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
Problem Definition ◽  
Lower Price ◽  
Pricing Strategies ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
Temporal Perspective ◽  
Equilibrium Pricing ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
Initial Price ◽  
Supply Information

Problem definition: We investigate surge pricing in ride-hailing platforms from a temporal perspective, highlighting strategic behavior by riders and drivers and that drivers respond to surge pricing much more slowly than riders do. Academic/practical relevance: Surge pricing in ride-hailing platforms is a pivotal and controversial subject. Despite abundant anecdotal evidence, strategic behavior by riders and drivers has not been formally studied in the literature. Methodology: We adopt and analyze a classic two-period, game-theoretical model as in the strategic consumer literature. Results: We identify two types of equilibrium pricing strategies. The first consists of a short-lived, sharp price surge followed by a lower price, which we refer to as skimming surge pricing (SSP). The second consists of a low initial price followed by a higher price, which we refer to as penetration surge pricing (PSP). We find that PSP equilibria are generally superior to SSP equilibria when both exist but require platforms to share demand–supply information with drivers. Managerial implications: The SSP equilibrium rationalizes the controversial sharp surge-pricing practice: the short-lived sharp price surge causes many high-value riders to voluntarily wait out the initial surge period, which attracts additional drivers to the region to serve riders at a much lower price than the initial surge price. The theoretically superior PSP equilibrium suggests that a vastly different approach may improve surge pricing and highlights the potential value and importance for platforms to share demand–supply information with drivers.

scholarly journals CONTINUITY, COORDINATION AND COOPERATION AS MEDIATORS BETWEEN ECONOMIC AND NON-ECONOMIC SATISFACTION – A SALES PERSPECTIVE

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 1752-1773
Author(s):  
Nils M. Høgevold ◽  
Göran Svensson ◽  
Pierre Mostert ◽  
Mariëtte L. Zietsman
Keyword(s):  
Structural Properties ◽  
Sales Representative ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
Business Relationships ◽  
Nomological Network ◽  
Economic Satisfaction ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
The Relationship

There is a gap in literature as to how multidimensional satisfaction fits into a nomological network with continuity, coordination and cooperation. Furthermore, most studies focusing on these constructs are limited to a buyer perspective. The objective of this study is to fill this gap by testing a model whereby continuity, coordination and cooperation are regarded as mediators between economic and non-economic satisfaction specifically within business-sales representative relationships, thereby establishing a foundation to assess the structural properties between economic satisfaction and non-economic satisfaction within a business sales context. Managerial implications offered in the paper were discussed and the practical relevance and implementation thereof validated by experienced sales directors. This study contributes by revealing that continuity, coordination and cooperation to some extent mediates separately as well as cumulatively the relationship between economic satisfaction and non-economic satisfaction within a business sales context. Subsequently, it contributes by extending our understanding in relation to existing theory and previous studies of business relationships to a business sales perspective.

Compensatory Coping Through the Extension of Working Hours

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 115-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maie Stein ◽  
Sylvie Vincent-Höper ◽  
Nicole Deci ◽  
Sabine Gregersen ◽  
Albert Nienhaus
Keyword(s):  
Job Demands ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Leader Member Exchange ◽  
Workplace Health ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Data Analyses ◽  
Member Exchange ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Advance Knowledge

Abstract. To advance knowledge of the mechanisms underlying the relationship between leadership and employees’ well-being, this study examines leaders’ effects on their employees’ compensatory coping efforts. Using an extension of the job demands–resources model, we propose that high-quality leader–member exchange (LMX) allows employees to cope with high job demands without increasing their effort expenditure through the extension of working hours. Data analyses ( N = 356) revealed that LMX buffers the effect of quantitative demands on the extension of working hours such that the indirect effect of quantitative demands on emotional exhaustion is only significant at low and average levels of LMX. This study indicates that integrating leadership with employees’ coping efforts into a unifying model contributes to understanding how leadership is related to employees’ well-being. The notion that leaders can affect their employees’ use of compensatory coping efforts that detract from well-being offers promising approaches to the promotion of workplace health.

The next generation: Experiences of higher educated Turkish-Dutch on The Hague labour market

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-217
Author(s):  
Karijn G. Nijhoff
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Education System ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Market Positioning ◽  
The Hague ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Dutch City

This paper explores the relationship between education and labour market positioning in The Hague, a Dutch city with a unique labour market. One of the main minority groups, Turkish-Dutch, is the focus in this qualitative study on higher educated minorities and their labour market success. Interviews reveal that the obstacles the respondents face are linked to discrimination and network limitation. The respondents perceive “personal characteristics” as the most important tool to overcoming the obstacles. Education does not only increase their professional skills, but also widens their networks. The Dutch education system facilitates the chances of minorities in higher education through the “layering” of degrees. 

Linking ‘Halal’ Friendly Hotel Attributes and Customer Satisfaction:The Islamic Tourism Sector

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Lennora Putit ◽  
Mazzini Muda ◽  
Ainul Nadzirah Mahmood ◽  
Nor Zafirah Ahmad Taufek ◽  
Norhayati Wahib
Keyword(s):  
Customer Satisfaction ◽  
Dress Code ◽  
Significant Relationships ◽  
Tourism Sector ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
Halal Food ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
Islamic Dress ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Survey Questionnaires

An increasing demand for Islamic tourism has driven the concept of a ‘Halal’ (or permissible) friendly hotel into another level of business insight within the consumers’ travel market. The concept via its unique value proposition has rapidly become very attractive not only to Muslim tourists, but also to non-Muslim tourists globally. This study aims to examine the relationship linking ‘Halal’ friendly hotel attributes and customer satisfaction. Using purposive sampling, a total of 410 survey questionnaires were distributed to targeted respondents with only 323 usable feedbacks and used for data analysis. Regression results revealed that four main “Halal-friendly hotel” attributes have significant relationships with customer satisfaction. These include prayer facilities, Halal food, Islamic dress code and general Islamic morality. Of these four attributes, prayer facilities proved to have the most significant impact on customer satisfaction. Findings and managerial implications were further discussed in this article.

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