Best Supply Chain Paper

The ISM Best Supply Chain Paper Award is sponsored by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). The selection process has four steps:

1. The OSCM Division Program Chair nominates a set of four papers that are candidates for this award.
2. These finalist papers are forwarded to the chair of ISM’s Education Resource Committee (ERC) for evaluation.
3. The ERC reviews each finalist paper, selects the award winner, and designates the other 3 papers as “Runner Up”.
4. The award winner is announced by the CEO of ISM at the AOM Annual Meeting.
   

Finalists for the award are selected by the OSCM Division Program Chair based on the ratings and comments received from AOM conference reviewers. The award winner is then chosen from these finalist papers by the ERC following a blind review process. The selection criteria are as follows:

1. Significance of the paper to the field of Supply Chain Management (SCM);
2. The extent to which the paper is interesting and managerially relevant;
3. Theoretical contribution to SCM;
4. Use of appropriate methodological rigor;
5. Clarity of writing and/or presentation.

2024 ISM Best Supply Chain Paper Award

Winner: Coordinating supplier-induced disruptions through governance mechanisms

Finalists

Christian Wagner, ETH Zürich; Christoph Schmidt, ETH Zurich; Stephan M. Wagner, ETH Zurich

2024 ISM Best Supply Chain Paper Award Winner Feature

Congratulations on winning this award, Juliette  and team! What motivated you to conduct this award-winning research?

Governance mechanisms, such as contracts, trust, and social norms, are effective means to manage inter-organizational relationships (IORs) (e.g., Cao and Lumineau, 2015; Roehrich et al., 2020). Governance mechanisms scholars have identified underlying functions of contractual (i.e., contracts) and relational governance mechanisms (i.e., trust and social norms), namely the control and coordination function, to manage IORs. The control function refers to ensuring that the other party in the exchange relationship adheres to one’s expectations (Salbu, 1997) and the coordination function is concerned with the alignment of joint goals between exchange partners (Gulati et al., 2012). While scholars provided valuable insights into the contractual and relational control function (e.g., Das and Teng, 1998; Anderson and Dekker, 2005), less is empirically understood about the contractual and relational coordination function (Roehrich et al., 2020). However, coordination is particularly important in long-term IORs as managers tend to coordinate instead of control the exchange relationship (Schepker et al., 2014). Furthermore, functions of governance mechanisms, such as coordination, consist of a portfolio of activities; however, less is empirically understood about how managers select these activities from within their portfolio (Cao and Lumineau, 2015; Roehrich et al., 2020, 2024).

Our study responds to aforementioned calls in prior governance mechanisms literature by examining the contractual and relational coordination function, as well as buyers’ use of coordination activities to manage IORs. In particular, our study investigates buyers’ contractual and relational coordination function and the use of coordination activities under partner-triggered disruptions that the supplier induced and then spilled over to the long-term IOR. Coordinating and resolving supplier-induced disruptions is important because it can negatively impact IORs. We also address the call for research to understand how governance mechanisms can be used to manage disruptions (Keller et al., 2021, 2024).

What is the most interesting outcome of your awarded AOM paper?

First, our study shows that managers have both contractual and relational coordination available to manage IORs when encountering a supplier-induced disruption. Our findings show different coordination requirements per disruption phase, which managers actively match with specific contractual and relational coordination activities. For instance, in the first phase of a disruption, the coordination requirement was to recognize the disruption, which was matched with the relational coordination activity of information sharing. Thus, the findings of our study contribute to an understanding of "how" and "why" contractual and relational coordination is used (e.g., Cao and Lumineau, 2015; Roehrich et al., 2020, 2024). Second, we find that there are certain managerial choices between switching from relational to contractual coordination or vice versa. We found that switching choices were based on two factors, namely the long-term, trusting relationship with the exchange party that triggered the use of relational coordination in the first disruption phase and the supplier's reaction (or the lack thereof) in the middle and final phase of a disruption. For example, managers chose relational coordination in the first phase due to the prior longstanding relationship. However, some managers switched to contractual coordination in the second phase due to the supplier's uncooperative behavior. This echoes Holtgrave et al. (2017), who found that cooperative behavior is prevalent in long-term IORs based on past positive experiences. Reverse, the switch from relational to contractual coordination is in response to an uncooperative manner, which may be explained by the more legal and enforceable properties of contractual coordination adding to the buyer's argument (Roehrich et al., 2020).

What are your future plans? How will you continue this work?

We aim to publish our findings soon in one of the leading OSCM journals. We also provided our research findings to our research participants with the hope of implementation. Lastly, we also want to continue our work on the influences of other situational factors on IOR governance, such as the influence of strategic priorities changes over time influencing IOR governance mechanisms.

Past ISM Best Supply Chain Paper Awards

2023 Enrico Fontana, Cranfield School of Management; Mohammad Atif, EDC Paris Business School: "Sub-suppliers’ Customer Share of Production and Sustainability Compliance in Apparel Supply Chains"

2022     Jesus Diego Castillo, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; Maria J. Montes-Sancho, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; Zhaohui Wu, Oregon State University "Cognitive and Structural Embeddedness of the Supply Base: Effects on Buyer Profitability"

2021     Pankaj Kumar, Agnieszka Nowinska, Hans-Joachim Schramm "Supplier’s Network Churn, Buyer-Supplier Embeddedness, and Transaction Price Outcomes"

2020     Yanji Duan, University of North Florida; Christian Hofer, University of Arkansas; John Aloysius, University of Arkansas "Transparency in the Supply Chain: Do Firms Benefit by Disclosing Supplier Monitoring Activities?"

2019     Marcus A. Bellamy, Boston U., Suvrat Dhanorkar, PSU, Ravi Subramanian, Georgia Institute of Technology “Supply Chain Network Structure and Environmental Information Disclosure”

2018     Henrik Franke, German Graduate School of Management and Law; Kai Foerstl, German Graduate School of Management and Law "How Rational are Sourcing Teams? The Effect of Goals and Knowledge on Politics and Rationality"