Cross-border buyer-supplier exchanges are increasingly common, yet the cultural distance between trading partners introduces a distinct form of uncertainty that complicates how firms write the contracts governing those exchanges. Grounded in contract theory and an information-processing view of exchange, we argue that cultural distance, as a source of uncertainty, increases the level of contract detail, and we parse this effect across the two principal functions of a contract: safeguarding and coordination. Using a unique data set of 184 proprietary contracts between a European multinational and its suppliers in 25 countries, we find that as the cultural gap between buyer and supplier widens, contracts become more detailed, and that this additional detail is concentrated in coordination clauses rather than safeguarding clauses. Safeguarding clauses increase only when asset specificity and cultural distance are both high, and the results are robust to numerous alternative model specifications. By isolating cultural distance—a pervasive but underexamined source of uncertainty in buyer-supplier exchange—and showing precisely how it shapes contractual detail, our study advances contract theory and offers direct guidance for managers seeking to tailor agreements in international settings.

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.

Public procurement of goods and services accounts for a significant portion of government budgets. Among contracts awarded annually by the United States federal government, a disproportionate amount of total spend is given to a relatively small number of contractor firms, many of whom have committed government contract misconduct in the past. We leverage insights from the contracting literature and organizational learning theory to understand the relationship between past contract misconduct and the likelihood of a subsequent contract misconduct violation, along with contextual factors that could influence this relationship. Using composite misconduct data captured from a longitudinal dataset of United States Department of Justice (DOJ) public procurement, a probit regression analysis reveals that firms with a history of government contract misconduct violations are increasingly likely to commit a subsequent violation, yet this relationship is not linear. Further empirical analysis reveals characteristics of contracting firms and purchasing relationships which moderate this phenomenon. Our findings contribute to the literature by providing empirical support regarding the relationship between past and future contract misconduct violations within public procurement relationships. We also offer several implications to practitioners and policymakers to support the identification and management of repeat contract misconduct violators.

With supply chains targeting increased efficiency, leadership behaviors are critical in influencing the employee experience, and thus the success of employees in organizations. Yet, behavioral work withdrawal, e.g., lateness and absenteeism, among frontline logistics employees is an acute challenge, estimated to contribute millions annually in related costs such as overtime or temporary workers. Our work seeks to capture potential causes for these withdrawal behaviors in the logistics supply chain. Extending prior work on regulatory focus theory, we propose that behavioral work withdrawal depends on fit or misfit between leadership behavior and the follower's regulatory focus. Leadership behaviors appealing to opportunities and growth (i.e., inspirational styles) are likely effective at reducing withdrawal for employees high in promotion focus, while behaviors appealing to accuracy and avoiding errors or failure (i.e., management-by-exception styles) are likely effective at reducing withdrawal for employees high in prevention focus. We combine survey and archival data to test our moderation hypotheses. Support is found for the fit perspective, confirming that no single leadership behavior is consistently better at reducing withdrawal, yet attentiveness to this perspective is critical as misfit increases withdrawal. These findings can help reduce overtime, employee burnout, and service delays and allow managers to reduce associated costs.

Understanding negotiators' decision-making processes in buyer-supplier relationships has been of key interest to behavioral operations and supply chain management researchers. We hypothesize that through the exposure to various counterparts in the supply chain network, negotiators' behaviors are influenced by others' behaviors and prone to behavioral contagion-where the target adopts the behavior he/she is subjected to and exhibits it toward a nonpartisan counterpart. This paper examines such contagion where targets turn into actors of honesty and deception across buyer-supplier negotiations. We analyzed text responses from two studies employing scenario-based negotiation experiments with 350 and 424 individuals with B2B sales experience and tested for the effects of previously received behavior (honesty/deception) and different frequency levels of the received behavior. Our results show contagion effects for honesty and deception in both studies. These effects are largely independent from the frequency with which the behaviors have been received, suggesting that a low stimulus frequency suffices to induce contagion of honest and deceptive behaviors across buyer-supplier negotiations. Interestingly, in contrast to our hypothesized key mechanism based on the extant literature, neither injunctive nor descriptive social norms mediated the relationship between received and acted behaviors. We offer alternative explanations and discuss implications for theory and practice.

Buyer – supplier relationships provide ample opportunities for trust violations to occur. Yet the literature on the impact and outcomes of violations of trust in buyer – supplier relationships is underdeveloped. In this study, we report the results from three complementary scenario-based experiments that evaluate the impact of a supplier-induced violation on a buyer ’ s trust in that supplier. We establish a spillover effect of supplier integrity violations onto the buyer ’ s competence dimension of trust, and of supplier competence violations onto the buyer ’ s integrity dimension of trust. We also examine the role of interorganizational governance, finding that contractual and relational governance are differentially effective at mitigating trust damages experienced by a buyer after a supplier violation. Specifically, we observe that relational governance helps mitigate damages to buyer ’ s trust following a supplier competence violation, whereas some evidence suggests that contractual governance serves to preserve buyer ’ s trust following a supplier integrity violation. These findings have important theoretical and managerial implications for the management of buyer – supplier relationships. We discuss why the governance structures adopted by firms involved in a buyer – supplier relationship have distinct impacts on trust assessments following a violation.

Previous research demonstrates numerous benefits of mutual commitments between parties. However, less is understood about the effect of unilateral commitments, when one party (the committer) makes a relationship-specific investment without an established current or forthcoming reciprocal commitment by the other party (the recipient). This problem is particularly relevant in the supply chain management domain, where organizations often make investments in their supply chain partners, and frequently assume great risks in doing so. To help organizations understand how they can initiate unilateral commitments to their benefit, we develop theory regarding the outcomes of unilateral commitments based on their temporal duration. We evaluate our hypothesis using data collected from three distinct studies, each using different methodologies and samples: a laboratory experiment of graduate students, a vignette experiment of operations management practitioners, and a secondary data analysis of baseball contracts. We find compelling support that unilateral commitments of shorter duration successfully drive recipient cooperative behavior; however, a significant decrease in recipient cooperation results from longer term unilateral commitments. Our research contributes broadly to the literature on unilateral commitments, and in particular its manifestation within supply chain management, where this research stands to make substantial impact due to the prevalence of unilateral commitments.

Social desirability issues are long known, but not long gone. Across major purchasing and supply management (PSM) research streams, surprisingly few empirical studies explicitly address social desirability bias (SDB), despite SDB constituting a potentially limiting factor. With regard to surveys and behavioral experiments as two of the most widely used empirical methods in PSM, SDB can represent a critical issue. A first step should therefore be to collect and fully report data on SDB in all such studies. The present note then continues by providing an overview of methodological considerations for PSM researchers to mitigate social desirability issues before they arise in their surveys and behavioral experiments. We describe eight potential mitigation approaches, namely disguising the study's research purpose, assuring anonymity and confidentiality, indirect questioning, adapting the wording of single items, broadening response modes, conducting preparatory cognitive interviews, using multiple sources, and applying multiple research methods. In describing this repertoire of preventive measures, we point authors and review teams to both the broader methodological literature and PSM studies that have used such approaches.

Organizations often use cross‐functional teams to make key Operations and Supply Chain Management decisions, but doing so risks instigating conflict between team members since cross‐functional delegates often have opposing functional goals. While previous work has explored the effect of functional goals (i.e., external motivation) in cross‐functional team performance, we extend research in this area to incorporate individual team members' psychological needs (i.e., internal motivation). Specifically, we consider how the interplay of these motivational mechanisms can lead to status conflict within the team, and the ensuing implications on team performance. We conduct an experiment of 136 ad hoc team‐based sourcing decisions, complemented with a sequential qualitative study involving interviews with 37 practicing managers. The results show that functional goal misalignment leads to status conflict, as expected. Yet, counterintuitively, this effect can be mitigated with the team's composition in individual psychological needs for dominance, specifically with heterogeneously dominant individuals. Our study contributes to the behavioral operations management literature on sourcing teams and to the team motivation literature. We provide guidance on how managers can compose cross‐functional teams to improve decision outcomes considering the interplay of external and internal motivational mechanisms.

The study of bargaining power and its role in negotiations has a long history in operations management research. Much of this research has involved buyer–supplier exchanges and has often hinged on the assumption that powerful firms negotiate to wield (fully) their power for favorable outcomes. Yet, it is unclear to what extent firms transform their potential power into realized power. Building on insights grounded in resource dependence theory and literature on competitive dynamics and organization design, we theorize that structural factors (i.e., decentralization, spheres of influence, and mutual dependence) constrain firms from fully realizing their potential power. In doing so, we center on a more nuanced context—multimarket buyer–supplier exchanges, wherein buyers and suppliers handle multiple exchanges across different product markets. We use two controlled negotiation experiments to test our hypotheses. Our results show that in multimarket exchanges, three key factors (and how they sometimes interact) constrain power use. These results offer boundary conditions to extant theory. Most profoundly, our results reveal that centralization (traditionally viewed as a structural lever to enhance power use) alone does not affect power use but has distinct effects conditional on other factors—countering theory and challenging best practices in industry.

Information leakages-the unauthorized sharing of an organization's information with another organization-are a growing concern in today's supply chains, but remain relatively underexplored. Drawing on attribution theory and observational learning, our research investigates inter-organizational information leakages from a network perspective. We assess the spillover effects of opportunistic and inadvertent information leakages between anOFFENDERorganization and aVICTIMorganization on the relationship between theOFFENDERand a nonpartisanOBSERVER. We consider the roles of integrity- and ability-based trust, as well as operational similarity between the organizations. We conducted scenario-based experiments with 181 sales practitioners recruited via MTurk and supplemented those results with post hoc interviews. Our results show clear spillover effects: TheOBSERVER's willingness to share information with theOFFENDERdecreases significantly after any type of information leakage between theOFFENDERand theVICTIM,but more so for opportunistic leakages. Integrity-based trust mediates the relationship between intentionality and information sharing willingness. We also find indications of an unexpected collateral damage effect in that to some extent, both trust dimensions decrease in both forms of information leakage. Further, for opportunistic information leakages, theOBSERVER's willingness to share information with theOFFENDERdecreases more whenOBSERVERandVICTIMare operationally similar.

In late 2018, the Journal of Operations Management published an invited methods article by Lonati et al. (2018) to provide guidance to authors on how to design behavioral experiments to achieve the rigor required for consideration in the journal. That article was written as a response to a number of behavioral research submissions to JOM , each dealing with interesting topics but viewed by the editors to possess poor design choices at inception. While the Lonati et al. (2018) piece provides experimental guidance fitting to certain research agendas, questions have arisen concerning whether and how exactly to implement some of the points that it makes, and how to best address trade‐offs in the design of behavioral experiments. Questions have also arisen concerning how to apply these concepts in operations management research. This technical note seeks to address these questions, by diving into the details of research risks and trade‐offs regarding demand effects, incentives, deception, sample selection, and context‐rich vignettes. The authors would like to recognize the input of a large number of senior scholars in the JOM community who have provided support and feedback as we have sought to help authors tease out what can reasonably be done in designing strong behavioral experiments that fit various research agendas.

As developed markets become more saturated, managers increasingly recognize the value of emerging markets as venues for growth opportunities. Yet, launching products into these markets is extremely risky due to weak institutional environments (e.g., lack of physical infrastructure), making success more uncertain. To alleviate this challenge, theory points to using emerging market footholds that yield market-specific knowledge. However, it is unclear whether knowledge is realized and, if so, what facets of harvested knowledge are effective in driving performance. Accordingly, we used data collected from a survey of business professionals to examine emerging market footholds and market-specific knowledge (i.e., customer, competitor, and logistics knowledge). Our results show that the extent of market presence held by an emerging market foothold is positively associated with all types of knowledge, yet only competitor and logistics knowledge-not customer knowledge-is positively associated with product launch performance. A supplemental sample of new product launches in developed markets revealed the opposite results wherein customer knowledge was the only significant predictor. Viewed collectively, the results suggest a market maturity threshold wherein logistics and competitive knowledge becomes less influential in driving performance, and customer knowledge becomes more influential.

Our research builds on the established work on managers' respective functional goals in cross-functional teams (i.e., external motivation) and intersects this literature with the perspective of individual team members’ psychological needs (i.e., internal motivation) in the context of organizational buying. We find that psychological needs significantly affect conflict in sourcing teams and interact with goal misalignment to influence both team consensus and final performance. Our study contributes to the growing behavioral literature on sourcing teams and to the scarce team-level motivation literature. Our findings provide guidance on how to compose sourcing teams in terms of their members’ inherent needs to improve team decision outcomes under functional goal misalignment.

Buyer–supplier engagement leads to numerous opportunities for unexpected positive benefits to occur. How these events come about and are managed (i.e., what entities are responsible for the outcomes and how the benefits are shared) remains an under‐investigated phenomenon in the supply chain literature. This research uses attribution theory and a systems thinking perspective to investigate a supplier's experience of psychological contract over‐fulfillment followed by a buyer claim. We hypothesize that a supplier's reaction to a buyer's claim depends on whether the type of claim (economic versus social) fits with the locus of causality the over‐fulfillment is attributed to: (1) the buying organization (buyer‐only attributions), (2) the buyer and the supplier jointly (dyad attributions), or (3) a third party in the buyer's innovation network (buyer‐network attributions). Results from a multi‐stage scenario‐based experiment suggest that following the supplier's experience of psychological contract over‐fulfillment, the supplier's trust toward the buyer is highest for dyad attributions, while the supplier's appreciation for the buyer's network is highest with dyad and buyer‐network attributions. Once the buyer claims value, however, the influence of attributions diminishes. While social reward claims had almost no impact on relational outcomes, economic reward claims significantly harm the supplier's perceptions of the buyer. Regardless of the type of claim, the locus of causality was largely irrelevant for the supplier's reaction to the buyer's reward claim. Our study contributes to the supply chain psychological contract literature by investigating positive over‐fulfillments of the psychological contract, as opposed to previous literature that has focused on negative breaches. We also extend attribution theory by introducing a novel supply chain‐specific attribution for the locus of causality, and we establish boundary conditions of attribution theory in the face of supply chain‐typical claiming mechanisms. For managers, locus of causality for a positive event seems to be irrelevant once claiming sets in.

In this paper, we seek to better understand absenteeism in supply chains (logistics distribution centers) by studying the influence of the fit/misfit of leadership style and follower characteristics on absenteeism. Building on prior work on leadership and regulatory focus theory, we propose that the relationship between leadership style and absenteeism depends on characteristics of the fit or misfit between the leadership style and the follower’s regulatory focus. As such, those leadership behaviors that appeal to opportunities and growth (i.e., inspirational styles) are likely more effective at reducing absenteeism for employees high in promotion regulatory focus and those leadership behaviors that appeal to accuracy and avoiding failure (i.e., management-by-exception styles) are likely more effective at reducing absenteeism for employees high in prevention regulatory focus. A dataset of 246 employees across five different distribution centers, combining survey data with archival absenteeism data for the six months following survey collection is used to test our moderation hypotheses. We generally find support for the fit perspective in explaining employee absenteeism outcomes, and that there is not one leadership style that is consistently better at reducing absenteeism. Importantly, we also find that misfit increases absenteeism. Our findings advance knowledge of absenteeism and the intersection of leadership style and follower personality in supply chain workplace outcomes.

In this study, we investigate the impact of national culture on the effectiveness of bonus and penalty incentive contracts in supply chain exchanges. We conducted laboratory experiments in Canada, China, and South Korea, involving transactional exchanges in which suppliers were presented with either bonus or penalty contracts. Then we compared suppliers' contract acceptance, level of effort, and shirking across national cultures. Our findings reveal critical cultural influences on contract effectiveness. We show that although acceptance of bonus contracts is comparable across cultures, suppliers from Canada, a national culture considered low in power distance and high in humane orientation, exhibit lower acceptance rates of penalty contracts. In addition, we find evidence that suppliers associated with collectivist cultures exert more effort and shirk less in bonus contracts but these relationships also are more complex. When we compare contract effectiveness across bonus and penalty contracts within a given cultural setting, we find in all three countries greater acceptance of bonus contracts than penalty contracts. Also, after contracts are accepted, bonus contracts are more successful in China because suppliers exert greater effort and shirk less under bonus contracts than penalty contracts. However, in Canada and South Korea, the results of accepted contracts for both penalty and bonus contracts are nearly indistinguishable.

Purpose Contemporary supply chain exchanges are governed by both contractual and relational governance mechanisms. However, the decision about when to use these mechanisms is likely driven by key relationship characteristics as well as the context in which they are needed. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the influence of dependence and information sharing on the governance decision within the context of inter-organizational conflict, and assess the degree to which contractual and relational governance approaches lead to more satisfying outcomes. Design/methodology/approach This research builds on both transaction cost and conflict resolution arguments to build hypotheses. To test the hypotheses, survey data were collected from supply chain professionals regarding specific episodes of conflict and analyzed using an ordinary least squares regression. Findings The results show a strong reluctance for the use of relational governance mechanisms to resolve conflict when the relationship is characterized by strong joint dependency or information sharing asymmetries. A strong dependence asymmetry and high degree of joint information sharing are associated with greater use of contractual and relational governance approaches, respectively. Finally, the authors find that contractual mechanisms do not necessarily lead to a dissatisfactory outcome for the manager involved. Originality/value This research investigates not only the use of contractual and relational governance mechanisms in inter-firm conflict resolution, but also the relationship specific factors that influence a firm's decision to leverage either type of governance mechanism.

Planning the operations within a container terminal is a complex task. It requires planners to demonstrate adaptive behavior while handling stressful, complex, and unexpected situations in today's dynamic and technology dependent workplace. This paper aims at investigating the role of multi-tasking ability, moderated by an individual's personality type, in predicting planner task performance using simulation gaming methods. Hierarchical regression analysis results demonstrate that the direct effect of multi-tasking ability on performance is positive and significant. With one exception, the personality traits do not significantly intensify or lessen the impact of multi-tasking in predicting task performance. The personality trait, openness to experience, significantly lessens the impact of multi-tasking ability on performance. Our results suggest that container terminal operators may benefit by considering the above-mentioned results while allocating planning tasks to their employees and new recruits. The instruments used in this research could also be used for evaluating and training candidate planners.

Today's globally competitive environment presents ample opportunity for buyers to dissolve relationships by switching suppliers. While previous studies have described supplier switching behavior based on supplier attributes and switching costs, our study leverages attribution theory to evaluate the impact of psychological contracts on supplier switching behavior. We report the results of a controlled experiment involving 265 subjects in which we manipulate three characteristics of a psychological contract breach: attribution (whether the breach was due to reneging by the supplier or a disruption), severity (whether the breach was major or minor), and timing (whether the breach was early or late in the life cycle of the exchange history). Our analysis indicates that in the context of supplier switching, buyers are affected by the attribution and severity of a breach but not by the timing. In contrast to previous experimental research in noncompetitive settings, we find that psychological contract violation mediates the relationship between breach and behavior. We further complement our primary findings with a vignette-based experiment and interview data collected from experienced managers. Our research makes an important contribution to the relationship dissolution and industrial buyer behavior literatures by providing a behavioral explanation for supplier switching and reveals the complex role of psychological contracts in supply chain exchanges.