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This research examines the long-held belief in the adaption-related literature that a firm’s ability to adapt organizational structure to changing environments is related to superior performance. We create and test a construct that reflects an organization’s ability to change structure, which we call Supply Chain Structural Adaptability (SCSA), rather than relying on proxies (e.g. structural form or organizational modularity) used in prior studies.

Quantitative data was collected from 218 firms to test our conceptual model.

We find that SCSA has a mixed effect on profitable growth under various environmental conditions.

We find evidence that refutes two widely held assumptions in organization research, namely, that structural form serves as a reasonable proxy for structural adaptability and that the benefits of adaptive capabilities always increase as environmental dynamism increases.

The lean and global character of supply networks today opens supply chains to potential disruptions, especially in volatile environments. Most disruptions are of relatively low potential impact; however, firms also occasionally face high-impact disruptions that may even threaten survival. This study applies and extends absorptive capacity concepts to organize resilience capabilities identified in the literature and to examine whether capabilities that provide low-impact resilience are different from those that provide high-impact resilience. A second and related objective is to evaluate whether low-impact resilience supports high-impact resilience through “learning by experience.”

Survey and industry data are used to understand capabilities involved with achieving both low-impact resilience and high-impact resilience.

The results of our analysis of survey and industry data uncover significant complex interactions in the effects of capabilities and volatility on resilience; suggesting that different absorptive capacity capabilities are related to low-impact resilience and high-impact resilience, respectively, and these effects depend on industry context. Moderating influences of exploitation capability and environmental volatility are consistent with a “learning by experience” explanation of the association of low-impact resilience to high-impact resilience.

This study thus provides a unifying framework with which to consider resiliency capabilities. Further, it answers a question raised in prior research, and it extends our understanding of important relationships between capabilities for different levels of resilience.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how managers' abilities to design and implement organizational change initiatives affects supply chain (SC) responsiveness. Extant research focuses on specific process and resource options to address responsiveness, with only limited reference to managers' capabilities in adapting to new organization designs that organize processes and resources. Consequently, organizational theory that characterizes the implications of developing and implementing various designs is ignored. The study directly leverages organization adaption, organization design and the dynamic managerial capabilities literature to address the question of how to improve SC responsiveness.

Qualitative data are used to identify specific dynamic managerial capability constructs, as well as the expected relationships depicted in our conceptual model. The authors test these relationships using quantitative survey data collected from 199 SC leaders.

The authors find that capabilities in organization design, functional leader negotiations and workforce communications foster SC responsiveness via improved structural adaptability (SA). The findings explain how and when organization design actions impact SA and responsiveness, and more importantly, why managers should invest in developing a workforce communication capability as the foundation for organizational adaptability.

By applying organization adaption, organization design and dynamic managerial capabilities concepts, the research expands the existing study of responsiveness in the SC organizational context.

Managing internal supply chains is becoming increasingly complex, requiring managers to balance diverse needs. As a result, managers continuously face the need to change how they organize their internal supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to examine this phenomenon by addressing why multinational supply chain management organizations (SCMOs) change their designs, as well as how managers respond to pertinent change phenomena using complementary theoretical perspectives.

Qualitative data, collected from 50 executives within 24 multinational manufacturers, is used to develop an understanding of the organizational design change phenomena. A theory elaboration approach is taken to illustrate how various theoretical perspectives explain organizational design change.

This study identifies and elaborates organizational design change phenomena in the context of multinational SCMOs, including internal and external drivers of design change. Managers also discussed key supply chain management capabilities that were developed in order to meet perceived changes in business needs.

This study contributes to academic understanding of organizational design issues affecting SCMOs. Four theoretical perspectives are elaborated upon to illustrate their applicability for examining SCMO organizational design issues.

This study provides managerial application of several organizational design change theories by elaborating principles for framing, interpreting, and implementing design change initiatives in internal SCMOs.

This is one of the first studies to investigate organizational design change in multinational SCMOs. This research highlights the complexity and evolving nature of SCMO organizational design decisions by describing the adaption, integration, and reconfiguration of firm resources and competencies in changing environments.

Extant studies on the relational capital—performance benefits in buyer–supplier relationships (BSRs) give limited attention to the value of internal resources/capabilities possessed by each party, thus imply the universal benefits of relational capital regardless of a party's own abilities. To fill this gap in the literature, this paper aims to investigate whether and how a firm's operational efficiency moderates the relation between its relational ties with the largest customer and its performance outcomes.

This study employs a large panel data of US public firms and their major customer relationships for the period of 1980–2018 from Compustat and a two-stage least square regression to address endogeneity concerns.

The authors find that suppliers achieve different performance benefits and disbenefits from their relational ties with major customers depending on their own operational efficiency. Specifically, strong suppliers achieve higher market share and lower profitability as relational ties with major customers increase. In contrast, weak suppliers who develop high levels of relational ties with their major customers tend to increase their profit-generating potential, yet their market share declines. Thus, the findings suggest that suppliers make different trade-offs between profit enhancement and pie expansion depending on their operational efficiency.

As a secondary data study, this research relies on proxy measures to capture relational ties in BSRs. Although the validity of the proxy measures are well established in the literature, additional primary information on sample firms and their relationships may be able to identify other types of internal and external resources and capabilities that can be leveraged as relational capital.

Relational ties with major customers entail both relational capital and relational liabilities. Strong suppliers trade off their profit-maximizing potential for the pie expansion opportunity via sales growth to major customers. On the other hand, weak suppliers achieve higher profits from relational ties with major customers, but this benefit comes at the expense of pie expansion due to decreasing sales to major customers. Managers should be aware of performance trade-offs between profit enhancement and pie expansion depending on a firm's internal capabilities and carefully choose to develop and exploit relationship-based assets with customers depending on their performance goals.

The contrasting performance outcomes demonstrated by strong and weak suppliers in this study challenge the prevailing assumption about the broad performance benefits of relational ties in BSRs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to empirically substantiate the contingency role of suppliers' operational efficiency in the relational capital—performance link.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the roles of a supply chain management (SCM) department. To achieve that, this study empirically examines the relationship between internal supply chain structure and operational performance, using survey data collected from 108 Japanese manufacturers.

Based on a literature review of not only organizational theory but also other fields such as marketing, logistics management, operations management and SCM, this study focused on two structural properties, formalization and centralization and divided operational performance to firm-centric efficiency and customer-centric responsiveness. To examine the analytical model using these dimensions, this study conducted a structural equation modeling.

The correlation between centralization of operational tasks and centralization of strategic tasks, the impacts of centralization of both tasks on formalization and the effect of formalization on responsiveness performance were demonstrated. In addition, the reasons for formalization not positively influencing efficiency performance were explored through follow-up interviews.

Manufacturers need to formalize, as much as possible, a wide range of SCM tasks to realize operational excellence. To establish such formalized working methods, it is effective to centralize the authorities of both operational and strategic tasks in a particular department. In addition, inefficiency due to strict logistics service levels is a problem that all players involved in the supply chain of various industries should work together to solve.

The theoretical contribution of this study is that the authors established an empirical process that redefined the constructs of formalization and centralization, developed these measures and examined the impacts of these structural properties on operational performance.

Operational practices and operational capabilities are critical yet distinct elements in operations strategy. The purpose of this paper is to examine their conceptual differences and explore how they are developed in a portfolio, considering the potential for practices and capabilities to be either compensatory or additive in nature.

The compensatory model argues that the lack of investments in certain practices or capabilities can be offset by higher level of investments in other practices or capabilities. In contrast, the additive model argues that the firm must invest in certain practices or capabilities and that trade‐offs are impossible. The authors examine evidence for these two competing models using an approach borrowed from studies of multi‐attribute consumer preference models and statistical comparisons of non‐nested models.

Data for the study were collected from operations managers who were members of a large professional organization. The findings indicate that the effects of operational practices are additive for some operational outcomes and compensatory for others. However, the combinatorial nature of operational capabilities is purely compensatory.

The results imply that adequate investment in a wide range of operational practices is necessary to enhance operations performance. However, operations units appear to have more flexibility in choosing to develop a distinctive operational capability set.

The study clarifies the different orientation of operational practices and operational capabilities as they contribute to operations strategy. The findings provide guidelines regarding the combinatorial natures of operational practices and operational capabilities. These guidelines have critical strategic implications for resource allocation schemes and how these schemes affect operational performance.

The need to make a “theoretical contribution” is a presumed mandate that permeates any researcher’s career in the Social Sciences, yet all too often this remains a source of confusion and frustration. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on, and further develops, the principal themes discussed in the “OM Theory” workshop in Dublin in 2011 and the special sessions at the 2011 and the 2013 EurOMA Conferences in Cambridge and Dublin.

This paper presents six short essays that explore the role and use of theory in management research, and specifically ask what is a good or meaningful contribution to theory. The authors comment on the current state of theory in Operations Management (OM) (Harry Boer), the type of theories the authors have in OM (Chris Voss), the role of theory in increasing the general understanding of OM problems (Roger Schmenner), whether the authors can borrow theories from other fields or actually have theory “of our own” (Matthias Holweg), the different ways in which a contribution to theory can be made (Martin Kilduff), and how to construct a theoretical argument (Mark Pagell).

The authors argue that theory is fundamental to OM research, but that it is not the inevitable starting point; discovery and observation are equally important and often neglected avenues to contributing to theory. Also, there is no one right way to making a contribution, yet consistency between ontology, epistemology, and claimed contribution is what matters. The authors further argue that the choice of theory is critical, as a common mistake is trying to contribute to high-level theories borrowed from other fields. Finally, the authors recommend using theory parsimoniously, yet with confidence.

The paper presents a collection of viewpoints of senior scholars on the need for, and use of, theory in OM research.

Notes that substantive relationships between dimensions of competition and supportive manufacturing strengths have not been clearly established. Existing priorities‐based models of strategy ignore the dynamics of manufacturing capabilities. Furthermore, these models employ highly aggregated concepts which mix together operational priorities, outcomes, and capabilities, making hierarchical relationships in strategy difficult to define. Develops and proposes a new framework which modifies existing models of business strategy and manufacturing strategy in order to clarify and define core dimensions of competitive differentiation and manufacturing capabilities. Discusses relationships among these dimensions that are apparent in previous research and case studies. These relationships are summarized by a comprehensive model with propositions regarding supportive links between manufacturing capabilities, manufacturing outcomes, and product differentiation. Concludes by suggesting directions for tests of the model and for related future research.

This paper aims to present a framework that will help manufacturing firms to configure their internal production and support operations to enable effective and efficient delivery of products and their closely associated services.

First, the key definitions and literature sources directly associated with servitization of manufacturing are established. Then, a theoretical framework that categorises the key characteristics of a manufacturer's operations strategy is developed and this is populated using both evidence from the extant literature and empirical data.

The framework captures a set of operations principles, structures and processes that can guide a manufacturer in the delivery of product‐centric servitized offering. These are illustrated and contrasted against operations that deliver purely product (production operations) and those which deliver purely services (services operations).

The work is based on a review of the literature supported by data collected from an exploratory case study. Whilst it provides an essential platform, further research will be needed to validate the framework.

The principal contribution of this paper is a framework that captures the key characteristics of operations for product‐centric servitized manufacture.