Abstract: Firms are vertically interconnected through supply chains to obtain materials, exchange information, and provide products to customers. Members in a supply chain include raw material producers, component suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and end users. Although acknowledging several firms are involved, received literature focuses on dyadic relationships between buyers and suppliers. But, firms sometimes go around their closest supply chain partner and deal directly with a more distant firm, such as a component supplier working directly with a distributor. Motivations include leveraging market power, reducing information asymmetry, and mitigating environmental uncertainty. This paper explores when and why firms go around proximate partners to work with more distant firms, discusses implications of this behavior, and provides illustrations from the motorhome industry.

Abstract: Analyzing a dataset of 100 components and supply relationships in the air conditioning industry, this study investigates if, to what extent and under which conditions the degree of coupling of product and organizational architectures mirror.
Our analysis shows that, under the condition of product architecture stability, supplier relations for loosely coupled components require less information sharing, which implies that the degree of coupling of product components varies with the degree of coupling of organizations. Also, the performance of supply relationships depends on the amount of buyer-supplier information sharing but not on the degree of modularity. Finally, component modularity negatively moderates the direct relationship between buyer-supplier information sharing and the performance of supply relationships, which confirms that modularity works as a substitute for inter-organizational integration mechanisms.

Abstract: This paper analyzes how timing in a buyer-supplier disputes impacts subsequent negotiation strategies. We examine different facets of timing – when the dispute occurs during the contract, the process of negotiations unfolding and the time to respond to the other party – and their effects on the choice of a collaborative versus competitive negotiation strategy. Our empirical analysis employs a unique dataset of 2293 negotiation interactions in 102 disputes arising in buyer-supplier relationships.

Abstract: Organization scholars have consistently highlighted the virtues of social capital in supporting effective exchange. At the same time, however, scholars also recognize that social capital in exchange constrains the fluid matching of buyers and sellers and thus may undermine exchange performance. In response, a large number of organizations appear to actively seek to de-socialize exchange often through the use of online procurement auctions. In this paper, we examine whether value in social capital persists in settings where deliberate efforts are undertaken to de-socialize exchange. In particular, we examine the procurement activities of a large global manufacturer that extensively uses reverse procurement auctions. We find strong evidence that social capital persists in value despite these efforts to de-socialize value. We also find that the value of social capital varies predictably with the attributes of the exchange.