ABSTRACT In fashion e‐commerce, about one in three orders is returned; however, firms keep offering free, fast returns driving these volumes even as they acknowledge the economic and environmental costs. Why do inefficient return practices persist? We argue that the answer is not a failure to optimize but a collective trap in which no single actor can afford to break away alone. Adopting a supply chain perspective and drawing on Extended Institutional Theory (EIT), through a qualitative multiple‐case study of Italian fashion e‐commerce firms, we examine how the interaction of legitimacy‐seeking and profit‐seeking logics across producers, retailers, and logistics and transport providers reproduces these practices. Upstream legitimacy‐driven decisions, aimed at maintaining high service levels, propagate downstream through contractual‐operational constraints, limiting the autonomy of logistics and transport providers. These interdependencies generate reinforcing decision‐making loops stabilizing dominant return practices, notwithstanding their inefficiencies. The study identifies outcome‐based imitation mechanisms, such as omnichannel return management, return consolidation, and differentiated return policies, as levers to disrupt these loops and enhance eco‐efficiency while maintaining legitimacy. The paper extends EIT to supply chain contexts and offers prescriptive insights. Practically, it highlights the need for sector‐based actions to rebalance legitimacy and profit motives for sustainable returns management.
ABSTRACT Existing research highlights that proactive communication of logistics service failures can positively affect consumer attitudes and behaviors. However, we explore how strategic restraint (i.e., doing less ) during service failures can serve as a powerful design principle for improving performance, highlighting the need to reconsider when and how firms intervene in such situations. Grounded in attribution theory, this study uses two scenario‐based experiments to explore the role of proactive communication in shaping consumers' attributions of blame and subsequent repurchase intentions. Findings indicate that in a logistics service context, when retailers refrain from communicating delivery delays with consumers directly (i.e., proceed with no delay communication or allow carriers to manage delay‐related communication), consumers place less blame on the retailer and increase repurchase intentions. These results hold across varying levels of service criticality and prior patronage.
ABSTRACT Public procurement is adopting artificial intelligence (AI) more slowly than private‐sector procurement, despite similar operational opportunities. We analyze this gap through Moore's Strategic Triangle (ST), focusing on public value, operational capacity, and legitimacy and support. Based on 38 expert interviews and a follow‐up resonance questionnaire, the study identifies three tensions: (i) contested performance gains versus social and environmental costs; (ii) data access for model performance versus stewardship duties for public and supplier data; and (iii) opacity versus accountability and contestability requirements. We elaborate the ST for AI‐enabled procurement by showing that AI changes how the three existing conditions must be held together. The tensions surface as practical questions about whether gains can be evidenced as public value, who controls procurement data and vendor learning, and whether AI‐supported recommendations can be explained and challenged. The strongest mitigation levers sit in agencies' contracting and decision practices, including work design, data rights and portability, audit trails, and supplier challenge mechanisms.
ABSTRACT The global climate crisis is pushing firms toward sustainable supply chain practices, with digital technology offering a vital pathway to track greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This research investigates the factors influencing the adoption of digital traceability systems for managing these emissions, focusing on implementation scope and supply chain complexity (SCC). Drawing on Institutional Theory and Transaction Cost Economics, we conducted a choice‐based conjoint experiment with managers in manufacturing sectors to capture the trade‐offs in their decision‐making process. Our results show that firms are more likely to consider technology solutions when (a) those solutions cover Scope 1, 2, and 3 GHG emissions, and (b) there is greater SCC due to ‘detail‐numerousness’ (number of elements in a system) and ‘detail‐variety’ (heterogeneity of these elements). However, dynamic complexity (changing nature of elements) has an ambiguous impact on technology adoption. “Detail‐numerousness” (e.g., number of products produced) is the most critical attribute for internal operations, while “detail‐variety” (e.g., geographical dispersion and supplier heterogeneity) has the greatest impact on upstream supply chains. This research extends the supply chain technology adoption literature by providing a nuanced empirical understanding of how distinct dimensions of SCC at both internal and upstream levels shape the adoption of digital traceability.
Disaster response efforts bring diverse organizations together in rapidly formed, ad hoc, and decentralized disaster relief supply networks (DRSNs) involving government agencies, for-profit firms, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Although responders broadly share humanitarian objectives, sectoral differences in priorities and decision rules can create conflict and coordination challenges that undermine equitable relief distribution. Using data from a multi-actor disaster response simulation, this research examines decentralized behavioral adjustments by DRSN participants and how they aggregate into system-level equity outcomes. Drawing on institutional logics theory, these behaviors are conceptualized as humanitarian-oriented selective coupling-the selective integration of humanitarian priorities guided by urgency, impartiality, and moral obligation into sector-specific decision rules. Results indicate that equity is most strongly associated with forms of humanitarian-oriented selective coupling that preserve sectoral roles, such as pricing restraint by for-profits and indirect distribution through network partners. In contrast, behaviors that bypass sectoral routines, including poorly targeted direct donations, are associated with lower equity. The findings identify decentralized and contingent mechanisms through which equity can emerge without centralized coordination, while highlighting boundary conditions where humanitarian-oriented selective coupling actions are associated with more-or less-equitable outcomes.
Supply chains are not only disrupted when structures fail, but also when managers cannot make fast, sound decisions under pressure. Yet, while the structural foundations of supply chain resilience-including redundancy, modularity, and buffer capacity-are well established, the behavioral mechanisms that determine whether managers deploy them effectively during disruptions remain largely unexamined. This study addresses that gap by investigating how supply chain managers use behavioral nudges to shape decision environments during operational disruptions. Drawing on 46 semi-structured interviews across two in-depth case studies in contrasting sectors, we adopt an exploratory, theory-building approach and conceptualize these contexts along a theoretically grounded control-versus-adaptability continuum. Our findings reveal that nudges are phase-contingent and context-dependent: reflective-transparent nudges, such as reminders and checklists, support deliberate and auditable execution in compliance-intensive environments; while automatic-transparent nudges, such as defaults and visual prioritization cues, enable coordinated, adaptive responses in fast-changing, technology-driven settings. We develop a novel framework that positions resilience as a behavioral-structural hybrid capability. The practical implication is direct: managers can deliberately engineer decision environments to improve how their firms respond to and recover from disruptions, making resilience not just a structural state, but a behavioral one.
The importance of replication research in the supply chain management (SCM) discipline is increasingly recognized, as it provides verification of scientific findings. Our study responds to recent calls by focusing on nine influential SCM papers that employ non-incentivized scenario-based experiments. We selected highly cited papers published between 2006 and 2022 to replicate and worked closely with the original authors to ensure our replications were appropriate and rigorous. Our findings highlight several important themes concerning these studies, particularly concerning the discovery of boundary conditions and the refinement of theories. We underscore the importance of conducting replication studies to verify our research foundations, reassess the managerial landscape, and reevaluate our understanding of decision-making behaviors. Our study contributes to the ongoing discussion on replication research in SCM, which is especially critical given the discipline's dynamic nature, and opens a dialogue about why we should not always expect studies to replicate and how to interpret results when replications are not successful. We maintain that replication research is necessary to build a solid foundation of knowledge that informs both theory and practice.
This paper scrutinizes the concepts of sustainability and resilience in the context of logistics and supply chain management. Building on foundational principles of sustainability, namely efficiency, consistency, and sufficiency, and on principles of resilience, namely persistence, adaptation, and transformation, we examine their interrelationship from a systems perspective. This perspective challenges the often-implicit assumption that sustainability and resilience are inherently complementary. Instead, we argue that their relationship is shaped by context-dependent tensions, trade-offs, and non-linear dynamics that resist universally positive (or negative) alignment. Drawing on an illustrative case of critical raw-materials supply chains, we discuss how strategies aimed at enhancing resilience may reinforce unsustainable practices, while sustainability principles can introduce new forms of vulnerability. The paper highlights implications regarding the (sometimes undesirable) stabilizing effects of resilience, the fragility of circularity, and the limits of efficiency-oriented supply chain strategies. It ends by calling for a more critical engagement with how resilience and sustainability are pursued and reconciled.
In conventional retail supply chains, the primary objective is to fulfill customer demand by delivering the right product at the right time. However, retailers face persistent problems, including product returns, inventory obsolescence, lost sales, and lost demand. This study investigates how digital product fitting (DPF) can help address these challenges. Using engaged research with three companies incorporating DPF into their operations, we identify four use cases: fulfillment switchover, assortment planning, product design, and networked switchover. Our theoretical foundation is based on transvection theory, which centers on a product's journey through transformation and sorting to meet customer needs-in contrast to conventional supply chain management's focus on efficient processes and resource use. In conceptualizing our empirical findings, we develop a novel object-interactive transvection conceptualization that treats both completed and incomplete outcomes as improvable processes. In this conceptualization, digital customer-product interactions enable: (i) a shift from binary fulfillment outcomes to open-ended, customer-specific transvections; (ii) responsive upstream planning that leverages aggregated customer representations; and (iii) digitalized sorting that can be repeated, reversed, and parallelized across nodes. Collectively, these insights reframe static structural choices (match-to-stock vs. customization) as adaptive and interaction-driven operational decisions, and they open new avenues for improving supply chain performance.
Ensuring trucking companies comply with hours-of-service (HOS) rules is an ongoing challenge faced by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. This research examines heterogeneity in how trucking firms' compliance with HOS rules changed in response to a multistage regulatory intervention that required most large commercial trucks operating in the United States to install electronic logging devices (ELDs). We extend theory by first drawing on deterrence theory to explain why carriers that utilize subcontractor truck drivers-called leased owner-operators (LOOs)-saw greater reductions in HOS violations as the ELD mandate was more strictly enforced. We then augment deterrence theory with principles from regulatory compliance theory to explain why this two-way interaction will be more pronounced for larger carriers, suggesting a three-way interaction. We test our hypotheses using the population of inspections across for-hire motor carriers from January 2013 through December 2023. Results from fitting a series of econometric models corroborate our predictions. These findings suggest important boundary conditions for existing theory regarding LOOs' compliance with HOS rules and help shed light on the complex interplay of forces that generate heterogeneity in compliance efforts.
This study explores how proactive organizational strategies-including commitment to anti-counterfeiting, collaborative anti-counterfeiting integration, Industry 4.0-enabled counterfeit detection, and government regulation-enhance pharmaceutical supply chain resilience against counterfeiting threats. Survey data from 283 supply chain professionals are analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling to test relationships among these factors. Results indicate that organizational commitment significantly drives both Industry 4.0-enabled counterfeit detection and collaborative anti-counterfeiting integration. Industry 4.0-enabled counterfeit detection further strengthens collaborative anti-counterfeiting integration across supply chains, significantly improving counterfeit resilience. A serial mediation pathway shows that organizational commitment to anti-counterfeiting enhances counterfeiting resilience of pharmaceutical supply chains by enabling technological detection and fostering collaboration. Government regulations positively moderate the effect of organizational commitment to anti-counterfeiting on counterfeiting resilience, emphasizing the crucial role of regulatory support. The direct link between organizational commitment and resilience is not significant, highlighting the need for technological and collaborative mechanisms to achieve resilience. The findings contribute to sociotechnical systems theory by demonstrating how technical capabilities and social collaboration jointly transform organizational commitment into effective counterfeit resilience in pharmaceutical supply chains.
Products sold in bulk and the reuse of packaging are attracting growing attention. While consumers perceive reusable packaging as providing an environmental function, it is not always convenient. Reusable packaging, as a reverse logistics model, forces them to consider a new logistical role-namely, packaging that requires balancing potentially conflicting functions. So, how do consumers logistically organize the shopping activity for products sold in bulk and tackle reusable packaging to reconcile its environmental and convenience functions? To answer this question, this research builds on consumer logistics research and applies activity theory as a theoretical framework. It uses a qualitative approach, including 30 in-depth interviews and photograph data revealing consumer activity. The findings reveal two conditions that enable consumers to reconcile their perceptions of the environmental and convenience functions of reusable packaging: (1) coordination of logistical actions and operations with other household activities and (2) optimization of activity system elements. Consumers adopt various supply chains, which implies different ways of coordinating and optimizing and leads to different outputs in terms of the environment and convenience. This research offers actionable insights into how consumers can mitigate perceived logistical constraints and impact on the environment, thereby enhancing their engagement with new ways of packaging.
This study compares Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) to human procurement professionals on supplier evaluation tasks. Using Structural Topic Modeling (STM) on 123 government supplier bids from 31 projects solicited by the State of Ohio between January 2023 and December 2024, we compare evaluations from three reasoning models (o3, Grok-3-Mini, DeepSeek R1-0528) against human evaluators. Adopting a signaling theory perspective, we find asymmetry in signal processing between GAI and human evaluators. GAI demonstrates high consistency and strong human alignment when evaluating compliance signals (e.g., technical specifications), which makes it suitable for qualification screening. However, GAI exhibits high scoring volatility with competitive signals (e.g., value-add propositions), indicating that human judgment remains critical for assessing differentiation. We also find that the number of bidders influences signal composition, with compliance signals more prevalent in less competitive solicitations. The findings suggest a two-stage evaluation framework where GAI handles compliance screening and humans focus on competitive assessment. GAI scoring volatility serves as a canary-in-the-mine to identify when human oversight is necessary.
Governance choices made at the board level could potentially impact environmental outcomes for the firm, yet little is known about how stakeholder connected directors shape such outcomes. This study examines how customer on the board (COTB) and supplier on the board (SOTB) differentially influence corporate environmental performance. Drawing on stakeholder theory, we argue that COTBs amplify environmental initiatives by channeling market-based pressures for sustainability, whereas SOTBs exert a more ambivalent influence: while their operational expertise can facilitate environmental improvements, their emphasis on efficiency and cost control may crowd out environmental priorities. We further theorize that these effects are contingent on supply-chain and financial pressures, including cost-of-goods-sold (COGS) intensity, sales volatility, and leverage. Using panel data from 306 B2B firms in the S&P 900 index between 2007 and 2013 (2043 firm-year observations), we find that COTB representation is positively associated with environmental performance, particularly under heightened market uncertainty, whereas SOTB representation is associated with weaker environmental outcomes when cost and financial pressures are high. These findings highlight how structurally embedded stakeholder ties on corporate boards shape the trade-offs firms make between environmental and economic objectives, offering guidance for boards seeking to align sustainability goals with operational and financial realities.
There has been interest in improving supplier environmental performance, with past literature examining the influence of buyers and competitors on supplier environmental performance separately. However, examining the role of these two stakeholders in tandem remains underexplored, representing a critical shortcoming as it reflects contemporary competitive dynamics. Additionally, much past literature has used "shared industry" to identify competitors instead of directly identified relationships. Using a panel dataset of directly identified buyer and competitor relationships, this research employs a stakeholder theory perspective to examine how suppliers respond to underperforming (generating more) and overperforming (generating less) buyers and competitors in terms of carbon emissions intensity, an important dimension of environmental performance. The results suggest that suppliers are responsive to underperformance relative to buyers and competitors, but only until their carbon emissions intensity is below that of stakeholder organizations. While the response is stronger for underperformance relative to buyers, competitors still have influence. Similarly, suppliers have worse environmental performance the year after overperforming buyers or competitors, with buyers having a stronger influence. Furthermore, we find market competitiveness plays a moderating role, as suppliers are more responsive in competitive markets. Post hoc analyses extend these examinations using additional sustainability outcomes.
Retailers struggle with late deliveries, thus motivating research to improve e-fulfillment performance. Studies have primarily investigated order processing and delivery individually but have ignored the interplay between these two e-fulfillment activities. The Theory of Swift and Even Flow (TSEF) provides a useful frame for examining the e-fulfillment process, yet it neglects important behavioral factors. We elaborate the TSEF using logic from the Queue-Length Visibility and Misperception of Feedback Dynamics perspectives to unveil how behaviors in order processing and delivery contribute to delivery performance. We analyze 11,241 orders from a major Vietnamese retailer using econometric methods informed by practitioner interviews. We find a concave relationship between order processing time (OPT) ratio (defined as the proportion of planned lead time consumed by order processing) and lateness. Late orders have OPT ratios exceeding 25% of the planned lead time, and they exhibit higher OPT variance. We also find a U-shaped relationship between OPT ratio and order delivery time (ODT); expediting deliveries mitigates delays until OPT ratios reach a threshold of 58%. Finally, we argue that workers and managers prioritize the processing of focused orders. Understanding behaviors in the e-fulfillment process offers insights that extend the TSEF, new research areas, and managerial implications.
Global disruptions have pushed supply chain resilience to the forefront of managerial and scholarly attention. Existing research has focused on negative, high-impact disruptions-commonly referred to as black swan events-and on how firms can mitigate their effects. Less attention has been paid to disruptions that originate from sudden and extreme positive demand shocks, despite such events creating substantial operational and strategic challenges. This perspective paper introduces the concept of "silver swan events" to describe short-lived, extreme surges in demand that exceed firms' operational capacities and are followed by pronounced corrections. We conceptualize silver swan events as a distinct class of disruptions, outline their defining characteristics and phases, and explain mechanisms through which they generate vulnerability despite their initially positive nature. Drawing on illustrative examples, we show how misconception of temporary demand, capacity constraints, and lock-in effects contribute to risks during the correction phase. By distinguishing silver swan events from established notions of black swan events and demand volatility, this paper extends the supply chain resilience literature with a conceptual framework for understanding positive-trigger disruptions. It further outlines managerial implications and identifies avenues for further research on how firms can design more flexible and resilient responses to a temporary demand surge.
Like the flows of materials, information, and finance, labor is a critical resource that flows into and out of organizations in supply chains. However, labor is a unique supply chain flow, and this research distinguishes it from other supply chain flows by identifying and describing its distinct attributes: agency, individuality, and a decentralized managerial process. Following recent calls to foreground the study of people in the supply chain management (SCM) discipline, this literature review synthesizes the current body of knowledge through an in-depth analysis of 80 relevant articles published in top SCM journals. A conceptual framework is proposed that leverages supply chain strategic, operational, and value-enabling perspectives to manage labor flows. An actionable future research agenda is then unveiled that investigates labor flows from an SCM perspective and highlights labor's unique attributes, moving this important flow to the forefront of the SCM domain.
A rich body of literature highlights the successful market entry of innovative disruptors in the retail sector. However, these innovators are in an inherently precarious position and face substantial market and regulatory pressures. As a result, they can frequently become "disrupted" themselves. When disruptors exit and potentially re-enter markets, it leads to market churn. The dynamics of such situations, and how incumbent firms can thrive during them, remain enigmatic within current literature. Focusing on transactional frictions in the context of retail supply chains, we explore how incumbents' supply chain capabilities contribute to their performance in the wake of market churn. We use the legal ban and unban events of Carvana, the largest American online used car retailer, between January 2021 and December 2022 as empirical context. Synthetic difference-in-differences analysis based on monthly used car sales data from 19,281 dealerships reveals that Carvana's market exit increased sales for local incumbents. Surprisingly, incumbents' sales remained significantly elevated even after Carvana re-entered the market. We find that the inertia of incumbents' market performance stems from their product diversity and service levels. This highlights how supply chain capabilities shape transactional frictions and help sustain market performance amid dynamic market changes introduced by innovative disruptors.
Supplier codes of conduct (SCOCs) are widely used in sustainable supply chain management. Yet, many of the targeted issues (e.g., child labor, poor working conditions) remain persistent concerns. We present a multi-method study that explores SCOC history and the barriers and enablers to implementation. Section A of our study examines the history of SCOCs through a longitudinal content analysis spanning a quarter century, from 1999 to 2024. We find that SCOCs have generally remained legal contracts with zero-tolerance bans on specific practices. The scope of SCOCs has expanded over time, while enforcement has varied in response to macroeconomic trends. Section B of our study presents insights from 20 interviews with managers to better understand barriers and enablers of SCOC implementations across supply chains. We develop a maturity framework for SCOC content and implementation. Our theoretical lens is Supply Chain Choreography (SCC), a derivative of Resource Orchestration Theory (ROT). We conclude that "traditional" SCOCs are instruments of orchestration and do not lead to successful deployment beyond tier-1 suppliers. Therefore, we propose that "collaborative" SCOCs, informed by SCC, be developed and implemented with a choreographic approach. We establish four propositions for future research and further develop SCC as a theoretical perspective.
