Lutz Kaufmann, Craig R. Carter and Christian Buhrmann
The nascent behavioral supply management (BSM) research stream has raised the level of attention given to deviations from the standard assumptions of the rational paradigm in…
Abstract
Purpose
The nascent behavioral supply management (BSM) research stream has raised the level of attention given to deviations from the standard assumptions of the rational paradigm in economics. The adaptation of cognitive heuristics, which add vulnerability to judgment and decision making, creates a pressing need to identify and develop mitigation strategies to debias decision making in the supply chain management environment. The purpose of this paper is to investigate debiasing measures, corresponding contextual variables in the supplier selection process, and their implications for financial decision effectiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a large‐scale empirical survey among 306 buyers to investigate the relationships among individual and organizational contextual factors, debiasing measures in the supplier selection decision, and the financial effectiveness of the supplier selection decision.
Findings
It was found that organizational and individual contextual factors have differing effects on the use of debiasing approaches in the supplier selection decision. Further, the debiasing tactics can have a positive (in the case of supplier selection task decomposing) or a negative (in the case of an interactional challenging of the supplier selection) impact on the financial effectiveness of the supplier selection decision. These findings suggest that supply managers must better understand the contextual factors that influence the supplier selection decision, and carefully choose the correct debiasing tactics when selecting suppliers.
Originality/value
This paper relaxes the economic assumption of rational actors and addresses the need to identify and use debiasing tactics in supply chain management contexts. The research also complements the broader‐based behavioral decision‐making literature, which has often relied upon experimental methodologies that use undergraduate or MBA students, by employing a survey‐based approach with supply managers as key informants.
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Lutz Kaufmann, Craig R. Carter and Christian Buhrmann
The authors perform a large‐scale review of debiasing literature with the purpose of deriving a mutually exclusive and exhaustive debiasing taxonomy. This taxonomy is used to…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors perform a large‐scale review of debiasing literature with the purpose of deriving a mutually exclusive and exhaustive debiasing taxonomy. This taxonomy is used to conceptualize debiasing activities in the supplier selection process. For each supplier selection‐debiasing construct, scale items are proposed.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic classification approach was used to build a debiasing taxonomy, combined with a Q‐methodology.
Findings
Based on the developed and externally validated debiasing taxonomy, five debiasing activities for the supplier selection context are derived. The conceptual investigation of these supplier selection‐oriented debiasing measures helps both researchers and supply managers to gain a better understanding of debiasing mechanisms and to effectively further improve the supplier selection process by integrating behavioral aspects.
Originality/value
This research extends the taxonomy of decision biases developed by Carter, Kaufmann, and Michel, by systematically analyzing strategies to debias the decision‐making process. The highly fragmented research landscape on debiasing was inventoried and structured. As a result, a debiasing taxonomy was created that extracted five main debiasing categories. These were then conceptualized within the context of the supplier selection process. In doing so, debiasing literature from different research streams such as economics, psychology, and behavioral and strategic decision making was systematically integrated into the field of supply management. Proposed scale items allow for empirical investigation as a next step in the development of the nascent field of behavioral supply management.
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Christian Scholz and Lisa-Dorothee Grotefend
Generation Z in Germany – born after 1995 – follows in many ways similar trends to be seen in other countries. Contrary to Generation Y, it is less career-focussed, less keen on…
Abstract
Generation Z in Germany – born after 1995 – follows in many ways similar trends to be seen in other countries. Contrary to Generation Y, it is less career-focussed, less keen on financial rewards and less willing to work flexible in a competitive world with total work–life blending. They look for structure, security and feeling good. What is different: Germany is one of the few countries in the world in which Generation Z in many cases can live up to their dreams. Germany has a prospering economy, a stable society and still a good educational system. Most important, for young people, it has an unemployment rate of virtually zero per cent. Therefore, companies definitely must engage in the war for talents and provide Generation Z with a fitting employer value proposition: Generation Z looks for meaningful and exciting work but seeks also meaning and excitement in private lives. In particular, they demand a clear separation of their private lives from their job. All this stands in contrast to the ambitions of the industrial sector in Germany promoting a more Generation Y-type environment with flexibility, agility and work–life blending. This conflict is not dealt with in an open way, since politics and media stand on the side of the large companies. Still, the power of Generation Z is not to be underestimated. Therefore, the chapter leaves it for the future to find out whether the Generation Z or other forces will win.
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Rainhart Lang and Irma Rybnikova
This study aims to explore the main discursive images of women managers as reproduced by selected German newspapers at the time of the political debate surrounding gender quota on…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the main discursive images of women managers as reproduced by selected German newspapers at the time of the political debate surrounding gender quota on management boards between 2011 and 2013.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on critical discourse analysis according to Wodak (2001), an empirical analysis of media articles on women managers in two German newspapers, Welt and Bild, has been conducted.
Findings
The results of the study show that despite the diversity of images fabricated by the media in reference to women managers, the debate surrounding the issue of establishing a gender quota in management boards is dominated by dualistic categories and reductionist identity ascriptions, like women managers as being “over-feminine” or “over-masculine”, “exclusive” or “outsiders”.
Research limitations/implications
As the empirical focus of the study lays on two right-wing newspapers in Germany, the results do not allow for generalizations regarding the German media landscape.
Social implications
Public dispute surrounding gender quota in German companies tends to reproduce stereotypical discursive figures regarding women managers instead of challenging them. A fundamental change in the media reports on women managers is needed.
Originality/value
The research contributes to the analysis of media representations of women managers, by providing context-sensitive results from the current political debate in Germany. The findings reveal the stability of discursive structures over time, particularly gendered bias in the case of media representations of women managers, notwithstanding political aspirations to change established practices.
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Public acts of self-criticism in Eastern Europe – a genre cultivated and extorted by the communist parties – did not disappear with the end of communism. In the young democracies…
Abstract
Public acts of self-criticism in Eastern Europe – a genre cultivated and extorted by the communist parties – did not disappear with the end of communism. In the young democracies of the region self-criticism has become an attempt to diagnose society’s ‘backward’ character and to develop ‘self-correction’ scenarios in order to participate in the Western modernising discourse. On the one hand, conservative and right-wing elites suppose that public acts of self-criticism (performed by politicians, artists or scholars) can endow the vetting procedures of the ancien régime with a sense of social catharsis and retroactive justice. On the other hand, liberal and left-wing intellectuals subject themselves to collective self-reckoning, not only with their choices made in the transition period, but also with the memory of WWII, in order to shape a civil society free of anti-Semitism and intolerance. An analysis based on the discourse-historical approach in critical discourse analysis, Reinhart Koselleck’s historical semantics and Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse, and carried out on the text corpus of selected acts of self-criticism in Poland, aims to diagnose the role these acts had in shaping public discourse on the troublesome past.
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Ana Maria Saut, Linda Lee Ho and Fernando Tobal Berssaneti
There is evidence that quality improvement projects developed with the participation of patients and family members are more likely to result in a sustainable change. To identify…
Abstract
Purpose
There is evidence that quality improvement projects developed with the participation of patients and family members are more likely to result in a sustainable change. To identify the intervening factors is an important step in promoting and supporting patient and family members’ engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey was carried out with 90 hospitals. A total of 35 intervening factors were evaluated by the healthcare professionals from the quality area using a Likert scale. Factor analysis was applied to identify the relationship among the factors and cluster analysis and the standardized scores for each new latent variable were obtained to observe the association between them and hospitals profile. Cluster analysis allowed to group the hospitals with similar responses and to analyze whether there was any association with the profile of the institutions.
Findings
A total of ten intervening factors are identified: two in the financial dimension, five in the structural and three in the personal and cultural. The standardized scores of latent variables suggest that the financial factors could be affected by the hospital capacity. The structural factors could be impacted by the accreditation status, location (region) and administrative control (ownership). And the personal and cultural factors could be by the location and dominant organizational culture. All of factors are influenced by the performed quality management activities. The cluster analysis allowed the identification of three groups in the financial dimension, and four in the other two dimensions. Except for the accreditation status in the personal and cultural dimension, no evidence of association between the groups and the variables raised to characterize the profile of the hospitals was found.
Originality/value
The study contributed to identify the relationship among the intervening factors turning possible to simplify and reduce them more comprehensively than those originally identified in the literature and at the same time maintaining the representativeness of the original variables.