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This research aims to investigate the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic (C19, Corona) on trends of transcontinental sourcing as an extreme form of global sourcing. This study starts by observing that the sideward movement of international trade in the past decade can be differentiated into an increase in transcontinental sourcing and a relative decline of intra-EU sourcing. By differentiating between continental and transcontinental sourcing, this study gains insights into global sourcing trends and conducts a fine-grained analysis of the impact of COVID-19.

After analysing Eurostat statistics, the authors conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with companies from multiple industry sectors affected by a high share of transcontinental suppliers. Using the Gioia method, data from the interviews were structured. By examining the identified motives, challenges and solutions, the authors analyse the impact of COVID-19 on transcontinental sourcing.

The COVID-19 pandemic seems not to represent a turning point stopping global sourcing. The authors did not find evidence for a trend reversal. Most of the interviewed companies share the opinion that transcontinental sourcing will remain important or slightly increase in the future. Based on the analysis of their specific motives for transcontinental sourcing, it became clear that factors supportive as well as detrimental to transcontinental sourcing are levelling each other out.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study explicitly differentiating between continental and transcontinental sourcing as different types of global sourcing. While in European sourcing, a decreasing trend is already evident, as shown by our data analysis, there is a lack of investigations addressing transcontinental sourcing. In this study, the authors concentrated on motives, challenges and solutions of transcontinental sourcing. Extending beyond the immediate COVID-19 impact assessment, findings suggest that purchasing would benefit from treating transcontinental, remote sourcing as a distinct process from continental sourcing, particularly intra-EU-sourcing.

This study aims to analyze how startups organize their purchasing activities to improve operative excellence and become attractive customers.

The authors use a two-phase exploratory approach with semistructured interviews and a World Café. In total, 20 startup purchasers and suppliers participated. It is an international study with participants from eight countries (Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA).

The authors find that startups organize the purchasing function in five ways: partial outsourcing, transactional-oriented, strategic only, outsourced purchasing and full department. Each type has advantages and disadvantages regarding operative excellence. The authors identify type-specific antecedents to operative excellence: forecasting, payment habits, ordering process, contact accessibility and quick decision-making.

The value of this paper is that it offers entrepreneurs a framework to organize startup purchasing activities, including outsourcing options. Furthermore, it provides theoretical contributions that expand the topic of purchasing and supply organization and operative excellence to the startup context.

The value of this paper is that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to explore purchasing organization and operative excellence in startups.

This study aims to examine decision factors for global sourcing, differentiated into transcontinental and continental sourcing to obtain insight into locational aspects of sourcing decisions and global trends. This study analyzed various country perceptions to reveal their influence on sourcing decisions. The country of origin (COO) theory explains why certain country perceptions and images influence purchasing experts in their selection of suppliers.

This study used a two-study approach. In Study 1, the authors conducted discrete choice card experiments with 71 purchasing experts located in Europe and the USA to examine the importance of essential decision factors for global sourcing. Given the clear evidence that location is a factor in sourcing decisions, in Study 2 the authors investigated purchasers’ perceptions and images of countries, adding country ranking experiments on various perceived characteristics such as quality, price and technology.

Study 1 provides evidence that the purchasers’ personal relationship with the supplier plays a decisive role in the supplier selection process. While product quality and location impact sourcing decisions, the attraction of the buying company and cultural barriers are less significant. Interestingly, however, these factors seem as important as price to respondents. This implies that a strong relationship with suppliers and good quality products are essential aspects of a reliable and robust supply chain in the post-COVID-19 era. Examining the locational aspect in detail, Study 2 linked the choice card experiments with country ranking experiments. In this study, the authors found that purchasing experts consider that transcontinental countries such as Japan and China offer significant advantages in terms of price and technology. China has enhanced its quality, which is recognizable in the country ranking experiments. Therefore, decisions on global sourcing are not just based on such high-impact factors as price and availability; country perceptions are also influential. Additionally, the significance of the locational aspect could be linked to certain country images of transcontinental suppliers, as the COO theory describes.

The new approach divides global sourcing into transcontinental and European sourcing to evaluate special decision factors and link these factors to the locational aspect of sourcing decisions. To deepen the clear evidence for the locational aspect and investigate the possible influence of country perceptions, the authors applied the COO theory. This approach enabled authors to show the strong influence of country perception on purchasing departments, which is represented by the locational effect. Hence, the success of transcontinental countries relies not only on factors such as their availability but also on the purchasers’ positive perceptions of these countries in terms of technology and price.

This paper aims to explore factors influencing suppliers' acceptance, integration challenges, expected benefits and support from customers when implementing a customer-introduced digital supply chain system.

The study investigates the perspective of suppliers using a mixed methodology approach that combines qualitative interviews with a large-scale quantitative survey conducted among 220 internationally located suppliers of an automotive-industrial firm.

As a result, the authors identified 11 factors that drive suppliers' acceptance of customer-introduced digital supply chain systems. These factors have been ranked based on their importance. The top three important factors identified were the digital system being provided at no cost to the suppliers, the system's ability to save time and the system offering benefits to the suppliers.

Further research can be conducted to validate the perspective of suppliers in other industries. Additionally, future studies can investigate the effectiveness of fulfilling these acceptance factors within an actual digital integration setup.

Companies can leverage these insights to accelerate their digital supply chain integration efforts. The insights on acceptance factors, challenges, benefits and support expected by suppliers can serve as a valuable guide for policy and decision makers within the industry.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to investigate the perspective of suppliers in the integration of a customer's digital supply chain. By including the supplier's perspective, this study makes a significant contribution to the academic literature about supply chain digitalisation.