Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management最新文献

Integrating circular principles into supply chains (SCs) is a significant challenge for many managers aiming to decouple their organizations’ activities from the use of natural resources and environmental degradation. Despite increasing research focusing on the circular economy (CE), little attention has been given to individuals’ interpretations of the circular transition and their own transition strategies. This interpretivist qualitative study provides insights into the managerial sensemaking of the circular SC transition, including the barriers faced and the strategic actions taken to overcome the barriers and realize desired outcomes. Semi-structured interviews with 19 change agents were combined with a cognitive mapping approach. The individual cognitive structures were synthesized into an overarching sensemaking map that captured the informants’ perceptions and social construction of the circular SC transition. The findings reveal four shared cognitive frames (i.e., the most plausible schemes) held by change agents: (1) SC cooperation, (2) circular business models, (3) circular design, and (4) material choice. Moreover, we develop a framework that highlights how sensemaking contributes to the calibration of cognitive frames and the strategies pursued by individuals. We contribute to the literature by providing insights into change agents’ social construction and perceptions of the circular SC transition and propose key takeaways for practitioners and policymakers.

This study investigates the risks of service procurement and the role of risk management practices during service procurement processes for IT services. As a result, the study provides a typology for understanding risk in the IT service procurement context. The findings indicate that several practices related to risk management during the service procurement process are important in reducing the probability and impact of risks. The study shows how a collaborative approach to risk management with service providers is also necessary to manage service disruptions. As such, the results of the study exemplify how risk management practices can support the procurement process for services. Based on the practice-based view, this study provides an explorative framework and propositions for enhancing service performance through the adoption of risk management practices.

In this Notes & Debates essay, we contribute to debates about the discipline of supply chain management's (SCM) system of knowledge production. We do so by exploring the range of ways that the appropriate use of theory can be understood. We highlight that a preponderance of research assumes the role of theory as a camera: a means of attaining the clearest image of the world as it is, achieved through empiricism and/or modeling. We also illuminate the possibility, stemming from a performative view of science, to mobilize theory as an engine for transforming the world. By examining the range of possibilities for researchers using theory as an engine, and by documenting the scarcity of SCM literature that has pursued one of the multiple possible agendas, we illuminate “white space” of SCM research important for the further development of the discipline.

Startups compete against incumbents for supplier resources. In this competition, startups suffer from the liability of newness and lack a track record and positive reputation. Startups that want to mobilize supplier resources need to become attractive to suppliers. This research analyzes the factors impacting startup attractiveness as buyers. Our findings from a discrete choice experiment with 129 salespeople show that startups are less attractive as customers than incumbents. We found eight factors that impact customer attractiveness. We compared the relative importance of customer attractiveness factors. We discovered that strategic compatibility, operative excellence, and innovation positively impact startups more than incumbents’ attractiveness.

The IPSERA 2023 main conference called for papers under the theme of “Systemic Change”. With this editorial, we intend to introduce the basic elements of systemic change, explaining why it is relevant for tackling complex sustainability problems and what are the major implications for Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM). We then explore future research directions, organized around a typology of four workarounds in complex systems, in an attempt to highlight opportunities for future research on resourceful, immediate, and adaptive ways to approach systems change. We finally conclude with an overview of the selected papers contained in this special issue.

This paper investigates how buyers assess the importance of various attributes of supply chain sustainability disclosed by suppliers. These include different types of disclosure (i.e., product, process, and sourcing network), self- and third-party verified disclosure, partial and full disclosure, as well as the attributes associated with information disclosure using blockchain technology: immutability and update frequency. Building on concepts in signalling theory and inter-organisational trust, our research uses a choice-based conjoint experimental design to elicit responses from 234 managers with decision-making roles in procurement. Using this design, we calculate the relative importance of attributes, part-worth utility, and marginal willingness to pay, and test hypotheses about buyer preferences and willingness to pay. Our research reveals that buyers prefer suppliers with sustainability signals that span across different types of disclosure and methods of disclosure. It emphasises the importance of how sustainability information is disclosed, highlighting buyer trust in self-disclosure and a preference for comprehensive, regularly updated information. However, we find mixed results for buyers' willingness to pay. For instance, buyers prefer third-party verified supply chain transparency, but we do not find a significantly higher willingness to pay for such information compared to self-disclosure. The implications suggest a competitive advantage for suppliers adopting voluntary disclosure, prioritising disclosure based on buyer preferences, and recognising the limited direct impact of blockchain technology. Our research contributes to advancing our understanding of information disclosure in supply chain transparency and presents new avenues of inquiry into the value of blockchain-enabled platforms in supply chain sustainability reporting.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a crucial role in the transition to circular economy (CE). The CE transition for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) with a focus on manufacturing SMEs underpins this research, which explores the potential barriers to implementing a CE business model. Barriers to CE transition are a growing research area, and this study makes two key contributions to the literature. First, we explore the interactions between different barriers to CE transition. Second, we do this through an in-depth case study of a small enterprise at the center of the electrification and mobility ecosystem that specializes in high-voltage batteries for special vehicles. Our results show that barriers related to the regulatory framework, market structure, actors and their attitudes, structure, technology, and tools hinder CE transition. Moreover, the interactions between these barriers keep the system unbalanced by reinforcing loops and making CE transition more challenging.

The circular economy (CE) model has recently emerged and been practiced by many firms due to pressure for desirability of sustainability. It is important for researchers and practitioners to understand the effects of firms' CE actions on their own and their supply chain partners' financial performance to better implement CE practices. However, existing literature has not analyzed the impact of firms' CE actions from a holistic supply chain framework to find how a firm's CE actions affect its supply chain partners' financial performance. In this study, we investigate this issue from the stakeholder theory perspective with empirical evidence from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research database and the Chinese Research Data Services Platform database for 2006–2021 to perform regressions. Our findings suggest a firm's CE actions have both a positive direct effect to improve its own financial performance and a spillover effect to enhance its partners' (i.e., suppliers' and customers') financial performance. Additionally, a higher supply chain concentration level strengthens the CE direct effect. Further, we find a positive moderating influence of industry competition on stimulating the CE direct effect and its positive moderating effect on the spillover effect of downstream customers' CE efforts on the financial performance of the focal firms. Our findings urge firms to implement and encourage their partners to make CE efforts to enhance their financial performance. Firms should also strengthen centralized purchasing and supply with downstream partners to utilize the amplified CE efforts' effect, particularly when they face fierce competition.

While prior literature suggests that firms can rely on suppliers and buyers for external resources to overcome constrained internal resource problems and thus fuel circular economy (CE) performance, scholars also argue that such dependency can lead to power imbalances, which will compromise operations. Drawing on resource dependence theory (RDT), we investigated how the degree of dependence of focal firms on suppliers and customers affects their CE performance. In addition, the study proposes digitization capability as a boundary condition for these relationships, given that the literature has repeatedly highlighted the critical role of digitization capability in supply chain relationship management. Employing hierarchical linear modeling on a panel dataset of listed Chinese manufacturers during 2010–2020, we found that the more dependent a firm is on its major suppliers and customers (the higher the supplier and customer concentrations), the worse its CE performance. In addition, we utilized data mining techniques to capture manufacturers' digitalization capabilities. We examined how digitalization empowers manufacturers to alleviate power imbalances in supply chain dependencies. Our results suggest that the manufacturers’ digitalization capability significantly weakens the negative impacts of supplier and customer concentrations on CE performance. Overall, this study contributes to the RDT and relationship management literature by highlighting the dark side of supplier and customer concentrations and introducing digitalization capability as a strategic response. These findings provide practical implications for managing the supplier and customer base in pursuing CE performance.