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Buying companies in the food industry increasingly recognize the need to cultivate relationships with their suppliers. Social capital and power are important to understand buyer–supplier relationships. Maintaining these relationships appears highly dependent on the degree of information sharing.

The study investigates how power and social capital dimensions are related to information sharing. A survey of first-tier suppliers in the Dutch meat processing industry was carried out. The data from 82 suppliers was analyzed using partial least squares.

It appears that expert power contributes to the cognitive and structural social capital. In contrast, coercive power showed no influence at all. Cognitive and structural social capital dimensions have a direct link to relational social capital, which significantly improves buyer–supplier information sharing in the food industry.

Buying companies can encourage supplier information sharing by building up their own expertise and cultivating social relationships. They should refrain from strong-handed practices.

Companies in the food and food processing industry are dependent on effective information exchange for their very survival. This study investigates the role of power and social capital in making such exchange possible and sustainable.

This study aims to get a deeper understanding of one of the antecedents of opportunistic behavior in strategic supplier relationships at the individual level of analysis. The authors specifically focus on self-justification, which could be seen as a mechanism that relaxes the moral scruples of purchasing professionals and, hence, facilitates actual opportunistic behavior.

The critical incident technique was deployed to interview purchasing professionals in the Netherlands about their personal opportunistic behavior in strategic supplier relationships. This resulted in rich autobiographical accounts of 29 critical incidents of opportunistic behavior. The data were analyzed through the lens of the self-justification theory.

The study identified a set of self-justification strategies underlying opportunistic purchasing behavior in strategic supplier relationships. Opportunistic professionals tended to deploy six strategies: acknowledgement, denial, rationalization, attributional egotism, sense of entitlement and ego aggrandizement.

This study is limited to Dutch industrial purchasers and was exploratory by nature. Future research could extend the perspective to other sectors, cultures and professional roles.

The study draws attention to radically new interventions at the individual level of analysis. To understand and minimize opportunistic behavior in strategic supplier relationships, organizations should acknowledge and address the important issue of self-justifications of purchasing professionals.

In contrast to the existing literature at the firm level of analysis, this study sheds new light on the antecedents of buyer opportunism from an alternative theoretical perspective at the individual level of analysis. The authors do not draw on the narrow perspective of personality psychology, but rather focus on the role of self-justification as an antecedent of buyer opportunism in strategic supplier relationships.

This study aims to highlight the effect of individual attributes of procurement professionals on goals concerning public procurement of sustainable innovation. Several barriers haven been observed regarding the application of public money to achieve these goals. Most research concerning these barriers focuses on organizational factors. Corporate initiatives are typically presented as a way forward tot achieve sustainable innovation. Less attention is paid to the efforts and attributes of the individual procurement professional.

A questionnaire was sent to 283 officials, involved in the procurement process of a large public organization.

As expected, a lack of top management support has a negative impact on sustainable innovation. Legal and regulatory complexity is less of a hindrance. The results indicate that both individual innovativeness and individual collectivism have a significant positive effect on sustainable innovation. Findings further suggest that an important way for an organization to achieve sustainable innovation is to allow individuals sufficient discretion to pursue sustainable initiatives. Many initiatives can be attributed to the individual innovativeness of procurement professionals.

The relation beween individual attributes of procurement professionals on the application of public money to achieve goals of sustainable innovation is investigated and can serve as a basis for further sudy on this subject.

Performance-based contracting (PBC) plays an increasingly important role in the defense industry. This paper aims to investigate factors that influence service provider’s willingness to accept PBC-induced risks. It also shows how these risks could be managed in a military service supply chain.

The case study focused on the relationship between a service provider and a customer that acted on behalf of other users in the defense sector. The contract involved the sustainment of a military engine in a complex supply chain.

The service provider’s performance attributability appeared to have a strong impact on its willingness to take PBC-induced risks. For the parts where the service provider did not have full control over the service performance, exclusions and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) were used to manage and mitigate the risks associated with uncontrolled performance. The service provider’s willingness to accept PBC-induced risks was also affected by its ability to make accurate forecasts, the applied growth path and the length of the contract.

This case has specific characteristics, unique by time (maturity of the technical system and supply chain) and place (market). It is recommended that results are tested in other research settings.

Organizations should be aware of the factors that influence a service provider’s willingness to bear PBC-induced risks. Customers should limit PBC to those parts of a contract where risks are of an acceptable level. Also, it is recommended to follow a phased growth path when it is not possible to make accurate forecasts in a PBC context.

This study is the first to address critical issues concerning the identification and management of risks under PBC in the defense industry.

Social return on investment (SROI) is a systematic way of incorporating social values of different stakeholders into public sector decision-making on sustainability. This study aims to identify salient factors that influence SROI implementation.

The interactions of four Dutch municipalities and their social enterprises were examined, by analyzing relevant documents and interviewing key actors.

External forces appear to have little influence on SROI implementation. Management systems, legal restrictions in relation to privacy and the administrative burden appear to hinder SROI implementation. Findings suggest that trust among the parties involved and their representatives is a major driver for SROI development. SROI is not measured well enough, which complicates analyzing and reporting its development.

Achieving collaboration through trust is a characteristic of stewardship theory, and therefore useful for studying social sustainability. Combining agency and stewardship theory provides useful insights concerning the application of control mechanisms versus empowerment.

Barriers can be overcome by informing and engaging suppliers in SROI initiatives. Furthermore, findings of this study suggest that it is easier for municipalities to incorporate SROI when social firm activities are insourced. An independent procurement function stimulates SROI development. Engaged professionals can make the difference in SROI policy implementation, more so than written policies.

SROI enables social sustainability. SROI can be used by public agencies to provide meaningful activities for the long-term unemployed and underprivileged adolescents.

The study is the first empirical work that relates public procurement to SROI implementation and its effect on suppliers. The findings provide valuable insights into government influence on social enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate meat traceability by outlining the different perspectives and opinions of meat supply chain stakeholders (SCSs); it also evaluates potential of acceptance of blockchain technology (BCT) as a viable transparency and traceability system (TTS).

A questionnaire survey of 141 consumers reveals their opinions about TTSs. In addition, semi-structured interviews with seven retail managers, four government officials and one blockchain service provider (Project Provenance Ltd) provide expert insights.

The results demonstrate that consumers are overwhelmed by the amount and complexity of certification labels. As a TTS, BCT implementation appears to have significant positive influences on consumers’ purchasing decisions, mediated by consumers’ quality perceptions. This study reveals the discordant perspectives of different stakeholders with regard to the importance of a BCT-based TTS.

This study investigates current TTSs and certification labels, and probes customer perception of a potential BCT-based solution for meat traceability. Changes to supply chains’ mentality and the active establishment of trust in BCT applications are needed. Firms should take both holistic and altruistic views to deal with the challenges of TTSs in the meat supply chain. The adoption of BCT, in combination with DNA coding, seems promising as a solution to many of the issues that currently plague TTSs.

Recent technological advances in three-dimensional printing (3DP) may disrupt traditional manufacturing and logistics processes. Because the increasing availability of 3DP service centers, affordable 3D printers, and online platforms empower consumers to design and print objects at home, companies must determine the motives that lead consumers to become prosumers so that they can establish appropriate business models and supply chains. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to identify factors that drive consumer acceptance and use of 3DP technologies.

The explanatory conceptual framework, based on the extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, undergoes empirical testing with a sample of 196 3DP consumers who participated in an online survey.

Facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation and a do-it-yourself mentality are key determinants of consumer acceptance and use intention of 3DP technology.

Companies can use these insights about consumers’ motivation to determine whether their use of 3DP technology threatens current business models or supply chains. In turn, they can develop new ideas about how to adapt these features, as well as identify opportunities for new revenue streams.

Unlike most extant literature on 3DP in manufacturing and logistics domains, this study takes consumers’ point of view to shed light on an issue typically investigated from an operations management perspective.

Little is known about the way local government utilizes the procurement function to promote sustainability. Sustainability is a political theme of considerable importance at the local government level. We investigated the relationships between municipal executive councillors and procurement managers in three Dutch municipalities. We found that the party-political councillors focus on initiatives affecting citizens to create public visibility and electoral support. Procurement managers however, are primarily concerned with stakeholders within the organization serving different interests. Sustainability initiatives appear largely input-based rather than result-based. Procurement managers rarely consult with the councillors. Rather, department heads have the final say in allocating funds in the course of sustainability initiatives.

Recent studies have explored the effects of e‐service quality on satisfaction and loyalty of online customers by extending and supplementing traditional service quality frameworks. This research proposes a combination of traditional service quality and e‐service quality frameworks. The central question focuses on how to assess the added value of the web as a service innovation for a traditional service. The setting of the study is a traditional‐style barbeque delivery service with a recently installed advanced web‐initiated order entry facility now used by a majority of the customers.

An empirical, survey‐based cross‐sectional study on web‐initiated customer experiences of an in‐home catering service, involving barbeque food items and cooking equipment.

Findings indicate that adding an innovative e‐channel to a traditional business process does not automatically translate to a higher customer satisfaction. Only limited significant effects were found from online ordering on overall satisfaction in contrast to the effect of traditional service dimensions.

Further research is needed on the joint analysis of e‐services and traditional services.

E‐service dimensions appear to have a limited impact on overall satisfaction in a traditional business context.

This is one of the first empirical studies combining both traditional and e‐service dimensions and relating them to customer satisfaction.

Traditional retailers still insist on using price, product, and promotion as sources of competitive advantage. This emphasis typically ignores the potential of in‐store logistics operations in the creation of customer value. A major objective of retail customers is to navigate the retail servicescape in an efficient, convenient, enjoyable and effective manner. In‐store logistics operations largely determine how and to what extent the customer may achieve this objective. However, customer‐perceived indicators of in‐store logistics performance, such as product returns, order information, opening hours, and product availability and accessibility, have been largely ignored in research on retail service. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of in‐store logistics in determining customer outcomes such as store image, satisfaction and loyalty intentions.

A model is developed based on extant research in the areas of logistics service quality, service logic, store image, and customer loyalty. To test the plausibility of the model, 200 supermarket customers were surveyed in an exploratory field study. Data were analyzed by means of structural equation modeling in SmartPLS.

Results show that customers may derive a substantial share of their satisfaction from interactions with in‐store logistics operations. Customer‐perceived performance of these operations – an important element of the retail servicescape – influences customer satisfaction directly, but also through its influence on store image.

In‐store logistics dimensions were identified based on exploratory research. A more structured, theory‐driven approach, might yield further insight. Explained variance levels in the outcome variables point at unobserved influences. Future research into the drivers of retail experience satisfaction could further complete the picture.

From a customer perspective, the paper investigates in‐store logistics performance and its effects on customer outcomes in a field study.