Manus Rungtusanatham

Despite the criticality and expense of spare parts, many firms lack a coherent strategy for ensuring needed supply of spare parts. Moreover, scientific research regarding a comprehensive spare parts strategy is sparse in comparison with direct material. Our research identifies and tests three literature‐based, theoretically anchored attributes that influence a buyer's preference for inventory ownership and inventory placement when managing the stock of a critical spare part. Our findings indicate that item specificity and item supply uncertainty are useful in predicting a buyer's preference for managing the inventory of a critical spare part. Furthermore, we find that buyers have (1) a strong preference for consignment‐based inventory management approaches, (2) a bias against inventory speculation despite its use in practice and analytical models, and (3) a strong preference for inventory postponement when the level of supply uncertainty is low.

How and why is the association between historical supplier performance and strategic relationship dissolution moderated by an unintentional but serious supplier error? Adopting Assimilation‐Contrast Theory, we propose that this moderation effect can be either negative or positive. As an empirical test, we collected and analyzed data from 256 sourcing professionals participating in a scenario‐based role‐playing experiment. After confirming experimental checks, we fitted a general linear mixed effects model to the data with appropriate controls. We find, ceteris paribus, that a critical‐component supplier with stellar historical performance is less likely to be terminated by the manufacturer than one with marginally‐acceptable historical performance. However, when a critical‐component supplier with stellar historical performance errs, its likelihood of being terminated by the manufacturer increases by a greater extent than when a supplier with marginally‐acceptable historical performance commits the same mistake. This positive supplier performance penalty effect contributes to the buyer‐supplier relationship dissolution literature by identifying how and why the deterrence to relationship dissolution typically engendered by stellar historical supplier performance does not hold. Our results have implications for how manufacturers should evaluate critical‐component suppliers and how critical‐component suppliers should manage ongoing strategic relationships with manufacturers.

Business function‐specific stand‐alone enterprise applications (SEAs) are displacing functionally integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, despite strong empirical support for the business benefits of the latter. This study explores the conditions under which it may be more effective to use a set of SEAs instead of a single‐suite ERP system, and vice versa. Based on Organizational Information Processing Theory, we expect differences in effectiveness to grow in prominence when the uncertainty of the operating environment increases, that is, when operational glitches in production processes become more frequent. Extending the existing literature, we postulate that high functional differentiation is a precondition for SEAs to be more effective than an ERP system, hypothesizing that the level of functional interdependence ultimately determines which type of software is superior for a given production process. We test our hypotheses using data collected from 163 make‐to‐order (MTO) production processes nested within 73 manufacturing plants and seven supply chains of complex, high‐tech machinery. Results show that when functional interdependence is low, the negative effect of operational glitches on delivery performance is effectively mitigated in MTO production processes wherein process‐related information is managed predominantly using SEAs; conversely, when functional interdependence is high, using an ERP system is more effective. Our findings offer practical guidelines as to when to use SEAs versus an ERP system while also integrating and updating the findings of earlier empirical research, in which each has been analyzed separately.

Small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) are moving their manufacturing operations from low‐cost countries back to high‐cost countries, reversing earlier offshoring decisions. These reshoring decisions cannot be completely explained by changing location‐related costs. To better understand why SMEs are reshoring, we evaluate nine product‐line decisions – six to reshore and three to remain offshore – and codify four empirical observations. We then integrate these observations with relevant literature to develop and analyze a system dynamics model of SMEs' offshoring and reshoring decisions. Synthesizing the above, we articulate propositions regarding SMEs’ reshoring decisions. We conclude by discussing these decisions through the lens of the heuristic decision‐making literature, providing managerial and policy implications.

Research suggests that flexible manufacturing resources, customer involvement, and product management tools contribute to a high level of mass customization capability. Conceptualizing these antecedents as resource types, we examine hypotheses about their direct and complementary effects on mass customization capability. Analyzing secondary survey data from 238 plants in eight countries and three industries via hierarchical linear regression, we find that each individual resource type has a positive direct effect on mass customization capability, as long as the levels of the other two resources are at their sample mean value. Probing these results via conditional effects and marginal effects plots provides partial support for the complementarity argument, and unveil complex nonlinear interactions among the three resource types. When the level of one resource type is low, the two remaining resource types exhibit a strong bivariate complementary effect on mass customization capability. Conversely, when one resource type is at a high level, the complementary effect on mass customization capability of the two remaining resource types disappears and is replaced by a cancellation effect. The detection of complementary effects and of cancellation effects are two specific theoretical contributions to the literature on how manufacturers can enhance their capability to mass customize.

Empirical research in Supply Chain Management is increasingly interested in complex models involving mediation effects. We support these endeavors by directing attention to the practices for the theorizing of, the testing for, and the drawing of conclusions about mediation effects. Our paper synthesizes diverse literature in other disciplines to provide an accessible tutorial as to the mathematical foundation of mediation effects and the various methods available to test for these effects. We also provide guidance to SCM scholars in the form of eight recommendations aimed at improving the theorizing of, the testing for, and the drawing of conclusions about mediation effects. Recommendations pertaining to how mediation effects are hypothesized and stated and how to select among methods to test for mediation effects are novel contributions for and beyond the Supply Chain Management discipline.

Operations Management and Supply Chain Management (OM/SCM), as a discipline, can benefit from proper theorizing to address persistent urgings for better and new theories. This paper hopes to inspire more theorizing engagements through the formal process of metaphorical transfer. Metaphorical transfer transforms casually‐invoked metaphors in everyday language into theory‐constitutive metaphors. This transformation process first mandates theorizing to ensure equivalence between the domain of the metaphor and that of a target phenomenon or research problem of interest. Second, theorizing during metaphorical transfer occurs when abstracted insights intended to govern both the metaphor and target phenomenon materialize. Finally, metaphorical transfer supports borrowing of theories from outside of OM/SCM for testing within OM/SCM by safeguarding against common mistakes. This paper demonstrates metaphorical transfer via the example of divorce and strategic buyer–supplier relationship dissolution and concludes by highlighting other metaphors that may be invoked for a number of exemplary supply chain relationship phenomena.