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The purposes of this study are to examine how contractual and relational governance mechanisms influence total value created in a buyer–supplier relationship and to investigate how supplier’s information sharing and information sharing asymmetry between two exchange parties differentially moderate these associations.

The study is conducted with a sample of 110 buyer–supplier matched dyads in various industries in Vietnam.

This study confirms that contractual governance and relational governance have curvilinear effects on total relationship value. Governance mechanisms have distinct interactions with supplier’s information sharing and information sharing asymmetry to influence total relationship value.

Future study could expand the sample to various countries to investigate the role of cultural factors in the effects of contractual and relational governance.

This study draws implications for supplying managers about how to govern a relationship with a buying firm with which they are sharing information. It also provides implications about how to use contractual and relational governance to control the effects of supplier’s information sharing and information sharing asymmetry, on total relationship value.

This study extends the information sharing literature by looking into the effect of supplier’s information sharing on both parties’ relationship value. It contributes to the governance literature by investigating curvilinear effects of contractual and relational governance on relationship performance.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how the consistency between objective and perceived environmental uncertainty might affect supply chain flexibilities that cope with supply chain risk.

This study adopted a case study of comparative four companies in order to obtain an in-depth knowledge of the environmental conditions under which the companies implement different types of supply chain risk management (SCRM) strategies: logistics flexibility and relationship flexibility.

The case analysis not only distinguished the different effects of objective and perceived environmental uncertainty on supply chain flexibility, but also established the propositions about the effects of the consistency between objective and perceived environmental uncertainty on logistics flexibility and relationship flexibility in SCRM.

In principle, supply chain flexibility aims to cope with complex and turbulent environments. Yet, empirical findings about the effects of environmental uncertainty on supply chain flexibility are inconclusive. This study addressed this question by differentiating between objective and perceived environmental uncertainty as well as between logistics and relationship supply chain flexibilities.

This study aims to extend ambidexterity theory from the perspective of organisational learning and examine how process ambidexterity, which comprises operational flexibility and operational routine, responds to environmental uncertainty and ultimately reduces organisational risks.

This study tests the hypotheses by analysing 464 annual reports of 115 listed companies in the Chinese agricultural and food industry using content and secondary data analyses. Four case studies are also provided.

The results show that (1) environmental uncertainty has a positive effect on either operational flexibility or operational routine; (2) both operational flexibility and operational routine have negative effects on organisational risks, supporting the view that process ambidexterity mediates the relationship between environmental uncertainty and organisational risks; and (3) organisational slack plays the role of “double-edged sword” by negatively moderating the effect of environmental uncertainty on operational flexibility and positively moderating the effect of environmental uncertainty on operational routine.

In an uncertain environment, companies are exposed to greater risk. This study contributes to risk management in three ways: first, it extends ambidexterity theory to process management and proposes how process ambidexterity balances operational flexibility and routines. Second, it distinguishes between the different conditions under which flexibility or routines are superior. Third, it explains the mechanisms related to how organisations can resolve environmental uncertainty into risk through process ambidexterity.

In the context of a retailer with an international supply network, this paper develops theories of (a) how both stability and strong ties in an international supply network combine to yield a resource base that enables the development of flexible relationships with suppliers, (b) how stability and relationship flexibility in the international supply network of a retail reseller may in turn be driven both by the international diversity and by the density of the retailer’s supply network in a product category, and (c) how both the international diversity and the density of a retailer’s supply network may directly affect the likelihood of a retailer developing flexible relationships with its supplier. In doing so, this paper develops and presents six hypotheses and discusses some approaches to measurement of the underlying constructs and testing the hypothesized effects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how several aspects of supplier category management policy might affect category sales performance at Korean supermarkets.

Aggregated (market‐level) Nielsen time‐series category management and sales data for several variety enhancer categories in the Korean supermarket industry are analyzed.

Across both small and large supermarkets, both the number of brands and the forward inventory level had positive effects on sales while days of supply of a product had a significant negative effect. For large supermarkets, the out‐of‐stock rate also had a significant negative effect, while for small supermarkets the retail distribution rate had a significant positive effect.

Using data for the Korean supermarket industry, this study demonstrates which policies for product assortment, pricing, stocking, and product replenishment can affect category sales and how these effects may vary between large and small stores. However, the findings rest on market‐level aggregated data and may be limited in scope to variety enhancer (i.e. low purchase frequency and high penetration) categories. Future research could try to relax these limitations.

The value of this study lies in confirming findings such as how category sales are higher in categories with a relatively larger number of brands (as has been observed in the US supermarket industry), as well as in the surprising finding that category pricing policies do not have a significant effect on category sales even though variety enhancer categories are generally considered price sensitive.

The purpose of this study is to examine the entry probability and performance of private labels at an organic food retailer. For a growing sector with unique market structure and category characteristics, it examines how competitive factors affect the attractiveness of a product category for private label entry by an organic food retailer and how the manufacturer brand assortment that the retailer stocks affects private label share.

This study analyses store level cross‐category data from an independent organic retailer and field data on retail competition.

The findings show that organic private label stock‐keeping units are more likely to be present in categories with supermarket competition. They also show that concentration of shares amongst manufacturer brands (as measured by the Herfindahl index) negatively affect the probability that the retailer will enter a category with a private label stock‐keeping unit (SKU) but positively affects the share of that private label SKU.

Although the results arise from a fairly small sample of around 30 categories, the focal retailer offers a unique opportunity to examine several private label decisions at the store level. Future work could examine in greater depth the competitive interaction between supermarkets and organic retailers and the effects of such competition on their assortment decisions.

By extending private label research beyond the conventional supermarket industry, this study conducts a pioneering test of the effects of competition between retail formats on the likelihood of private label entry.

Many analysts claim that global systems of information management have become singularly important in explaining market transformation. In contrast, an entrepreneurial tradition in marketing thought suggests an alternative to the contemporary exaltation of information and information management. In this tradition, information intensity becomes an endogenous and increasingly manageable consequence of the process of transformation. Suggests that, by attracting global technological homogeneity, industry‐wide information intensity can plant the seeds of its own destruction as a revolutionary force.

In response to highly volatile and uncertain environments, many firms have implemented flexible strategies and many management researchers have discussed the topic of flexibility. The purpose of this paper is to focus on distribution flexibility, the aspect of flexibility related to a downstream supply chain and to examine the construct of distribution flexibility and how organisations make strategic choices among different distribution flexibility strategies.

This work conducts an exploratory multiple case study which analyses four Chinese manufacturers from different industries (pharmaceutical, solid/liquid separation, electric appliances, and clothing).

The results show that, given different circumstances, firms might choose an appropriate distribution flexibility strategy (one focused on either physical distribution flexibility, demand management flexibility, coordination flexibility, or on distribution flexibility co‐alignment) which fits with their distribution environment in the contingency theory sense of matching. Furthermore, for implementation, they fit a given distribution flexibility strategy to both their distribution networks and their distribution performance outcomes in the sense of gestalts or covariance.

This paper has some limitations common to all case studies, such as the limited generalisability of results (since the sample of firms is not statistically significant) and the potential subjectivity of the analysis.

The paper contributes to the existing literature by empirically investigating the dimensions of distribution flexibility, by considering how an organisation develops a distribution flexibility strategy in order to adapt to a particular environment, and by suggesting that final performance outcomes may arise through a variety of different distribution flexibility strategies.

Suggests that gaps exist between the product ranges or lines offered by manufacturers and the assortments selected and stocked by retailers. Looks at the extent to which differing levels of “product volatility” affect retailers’ selectivity in stocking items from a manufacturer’s line. Provides a limited test of several hypotheses about how the degree of product volatility of the category within which a manufacturer’s line belongs might affect the number of items in the line that will be stocked by a retailer. Analysis of stock‐planning data for two retailers in each of two product categories offers some support for the hypotheses. Interprets these results in light of theories of distribution channel co‐ordination and retailer expertise. They may reflect an alternative explanation for widely observed increases in retailer power.

The Internet and its commercial applications in electronic commerce, particularly new ventures like B2B e‐markets, are experiencing a volatile introduction to the business environment. Businesses are restructuring and forming networks in an effort to accommodate and use this new phenomenon to their advantage. From this perspective, this article offers a conceptual framework on the process of creating these new ventures, the impact of network champions in the creation process and the strategic significance of the competency‐destroying innovation (Internet) for buyers and sellers who join the B2B e‐market. Several working propositions are developed from the extant literature that should be useful for empirical work on how new B2B e‐markets are implemented. The paper presents a refined proposition based on a field study of a B2B e‐market case.