Kamran Razmdoost and Leila Alinaghian
The adoption of social procurement, the emerging practice of using a firm's spending power to generate social value, requires buying firms to navigate conflicts of institutional…
Abstract
Purpose
The adoption of social procurement, the emerging practice of using a firm's spending power to generate social value, requires buying firms to navigate conflicts of institutional logics. Adopting an institutional work perspective, this study aims to investigate how buying firms change their existing procurement institutions to adopt and advance social procurement.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted an in-depth case study of a social procurement initiative in the UK. This case study comprised of 16 buying firms that were actively participating in the social procurement initiative at the time of data collection (2020–2021). The data were largely captured through a set of 41 semi-structured interviews.
Findings
Four types of institutional work were observed: reducing institutional conflicts, crossing institutional boundaries, legitimising institutional change and spreading the new institutional logic. These different types of institutional work appeared in a sequential way.
Originality/value
This study contributes to various strands of literature investigating the role of procurement in generating value and benefits within societies, adopting an institutional lens to investigate the buying firms' purposeful actions to change procurement institutions. Secondly, this study complements the existing literature investigating the conflicts of institutional logics by illustrating the ways firms address such institutional conflicts when adopting and advancing social procurement. Finally, this work contributes to the recently emerging research on institutional work that examines the creation and establishment of new institutions by considering the existing procurement institutions in the examination of institutional work.
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Leila Alinaghian, Jilin Qiu and Kamran Razmdoost
The purpose of this paper is to systematically review and assess the current status of research on supply chain sustainability from a network structural perspective and provide an…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to systematically review and assess the current status of research on supply chain sustainability from a network structural perspective and provide an organising framework for future scholarship in this area.
Design/methodology/approach
By adopting an evidence-based approach, this study conducts a systematic review of 73 articles from 18 peer-reviewed journals published between 2000 and 2020.
Findings
Adopting a social network analysis approach, the review identifies specific node-level (i.e. degree centrality, closeness centrality and betweenness centrality) and network-level (i.e. network density, network sub-groups and network diversity) structural properties that play a role in supply chain sustainability. The results reveal that structural properties determine the extent of perception of sustainability risks, the diffusion of sustainability targets, introduction of sustainable innovations, development of sustainability capabilities, adoption of sustainability initiatives and the monitoring of sustainability performance throughout the supply chain.
Originality/value
By distinguishing between supply network and sustainable supply network types, this study extends the existing understandings of the role of network connectivity patterns in supply chain sustainability through synthesising and evaluating the extant literature. This study further clarifies the role of these network structural properties in supply chain sustainability by describing their impact on a set of sustainable supply chain management practices through which firms achieve sustainability goals across their supply chains.
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Anis Daghar, Leila Alinaghian and Neil Turner
Research on the “black box” of cognitive capital remains limited in supply chain resilience (SCRES) literature. Drawing from an in-depth single case study of a major consumer…
Abstract
Purpose
Research on the “black box” of cognitive capital remains limited in supply chain resilience (SCRES) literature. Drawing from an in-depth single case study of a major consumer electronics multinational facing the COVID-19 disruption, this paper aims to develop a clearer picture of cognitive capital’s elements while contextualizing how they interact with SCRES temporal capabilities to prepare, respond, recover and learn.
Design/methodology/approach
Consisting of 40 in-depth interviews collected during a four-month period, this single case revolves around the buyer’s view across 36 multiregional buyer–supplier dyads, spanning 17 product and service categories. Data were processed during the pandemic, while findings discuss pre- and intra-crisis events based on two scenarios: the impact of disruption on category demand, comparing sudden pandemic-driven product and service demand fluctuations (i.e. increase, decrease); and the geographical proximity of the supplier relative to the buying firm.
Findings
The case unveils different elements of cognitive capital (e.g. shared goals, assumptions, values, kinesics language, multilingualism, virtual negotiation, prior disruption experience, shared process capabilities) during a major global disruption, suggesting that different cognitive capital elements influence positively and differently SCRES’ temporal capabilities. Overall, buying firms are urged to build on cognitive capital to improve SCRES preparation, response, recovery and learning.
Originality/value
This paper extends the understanding of cognitive capital in buyer–supplier relationships by identifying its elements and offering a theoretical articulation of how they enable episodically the four SCRES temporal capabilities under contingencies of increased and decreased demands, and suppliers’ geographical proximity.
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Anis Daghar, Leila Alinaghian and Neil Turner
The purpose of this paper is to systematically review, synthesize and critically evaluate the current research status on the role of collaborative interorganizational…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to systematically review, synthesize and critically evaluate the current research status on the role of collaborative interorganizational relationships (CIRs) in supply chain risks (SCRs) from a social capital perspective and provide an organizing lens for future scholarship in this area.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a systematic literature review approach to investigate 126 articles from 27 peer-reviewed journals between 1995 and 2020.
Findings
This paper investigates supply chain CIRs using a social capital perspective to explain the role of structural, relational and cognitive capital that resides in these relationships in various SCRs (i.e. environmental, supply, manufacturing, demand, information, financial and transportation). The review reveals that the three social capital dimensions uniquely and both positively and negatively affect different SCRs. The findings further suggest that the perceived SCRs can influence the structural and relational capital.
Practical implications
This study calls for practitioners to consider the cognitive alignment with their supply network partners, their relational investments, as well as the interorganizational processes and systems in managing and alleviating SCRs.
Originality/value
This review offers a theoretical articulation of how various aspects of CIRs affect SCRs. Specifically, this study extends the existing understanding of the role of social capital in SCRs through offering a synthesis of dominant findings and discourses, and avenues for future research.