Rongrong Shi, Baojun Yang, Zhaofang Chu and Fujun Lai
Digitalization brings complexity and challenges to the relationship governance between logistics outsourcers and their providers. Drawn on resource dependence theory (RDT) and…
Abstract
Purpose
Digitalization brings complexity and challenges to the relationship governance between logistics outsourcers and their providers. Drawn on resource dependence theory (RDT) and resource-based view (RBV), this study aims to examine the role of relationship commitment in simultaneously managing dependence and improving operational performance in logistics outsourcing in the digital economy, as well as the contingent factors (i.e. communication, relationship length, and company size) that affect the effectiveness of relationship commitment.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on data collected from 130 third-party logistics (3PL) users in China, our model was tested with the partial least squares (PLS) approach.
Findings
First, relationship commitment is necessary for 3PL users to manage dependence on 3PL providers and improve operational performance in the digital economy. Second, communication helps 3PL users to develop higher relationship commitment but weakens the motivating effect of dependence on relationship commitment. Third, a long relationship history develops inertia to diminish the effectiveness of dependence on driving relationship commitment while it boosts the impact of relationship commitment on operational performance. Last, company size is an important signal to amplify the effectiveness of relationship commitment for operational performance enhancement.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the logistics outsourcing literature by integrating RDT and RBV to explain the twofold roles of relationship commitment, simultaneously tackling dependence and enhancing operational performance in the digital economy. Additionally, it expands the understanding of the boundary conditions (e.g. communication, relationship length, and company size) on these twofold roles.
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Wan Jiang, Linlin Wang, Zhaofang Chu and Xifang Ma
The purpose of this paper is to examine how analyst recommendation change is associated with a firm’s magnitude of strategic change.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how analyst recommendation change is associated with a firm’s magnitude of strategic change.
Design/methodology/approach
This study argues that unfavorable analyst recommendation change serves as a powerful external assessment that current strategies are inappropriate and that changes are needed. This study also incorporates the moderating roles of CEO power and board’s informal hierarchy in the relationship between analyst recommendation change and firm’s magnitude of strategic change. Results from a sample of 824 observations generally support our predictions.
Findings
The findings of this study show that the greater the analysts downgrade for the company’s stock, the larger the magnitude of strategic change will be made. This study also considers the moderating roles of CEO power and the clarity of board’s informal hierarchy. In particular, the higher the CEO power, the weaker the relationship between analyst recommendation change and the magnitude of strategic change will be. The higher the clarity of board’s informal hierarchy, the more positive the relationship between analyst recommendation change and the magnitude of strategic change will be.
Originality/value
It extends research on the external predictors of strategic change by incorporating the role of unfavorable analyst recommendation change. In addition, it contributes to institutional theory by showing how external legitimacy pressure and internal corporate governance tool complement each other.
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Zhaofang Chu, Linlin Wang and Fujun Lai
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customer pressure influences green innovation in the context of Chinese third-party logistics (3PL) providers, and especially the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customer pressure influences green innovation in the context of Chinese third-party logistics (3PL) providers, and especially the role of organizational culture in moderating this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on survey data collected from 165 3PL providers in China, hierarchical moderated regression analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses.
Findings
Customer pressure is an important driver of green innovation amongst 3PL providers. Flexibility-oriented organizational culture strengthens the effect of this driving force, while control-oriented organizational culture weakens this force. Green innovation significantly contributes to financial performance and flexibility orientation strengthens this contribution, while control orientation weakens it.
Research limitations/implications
This research examines the contingency effect of organizational culture in helping to resolve inconsistencies in the relationship between customer pressure and green innovation. Although the inconsistencies cannot be resolved completely, the research opens an avenue to explore other contingency factors or the possibility of a non-linear relationship.
Practical implications
3PL firms could undertake green innovation to satisfy customers’ environmental requirements. To develop their green innovation initiatives, managers should allow their employees greater autonomy and design (or re-design) operations procedures and regulations to be more flexible, thus enabling the diffusion of green innovation and avoiding or reducing the potential influence of control-oriented organization culture.
Originality/value
The study considers the conditional effect of organizational culture to reconcile the mixed results in the literature regarding the relationship between customer pressure and green innovation of logistics service providers.
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Zhaofang Chu, Qiang Wang and Augustine A. Lado
Drawing on the customer value-based theory and the resource dependency theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how Chinese third-party logistics (3PL) providers…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on the customer value-based theory and the resource dependency theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how Chinese third-party logistics (3PL) providers leverage their customer orientation to improve operational performance directly in a stable environment or through building and maintaining high-quality 3PL relationships in an uncertain environment.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey-based approach is employed to collect data from managers at 132 3PL providers in mainland China. Confirmatory factor analysis is used to assess measures and hierarchical regression is utilized to test the hypothesized relationships.
Findings
This study documents significant positive effects of customer orientation and relationship quality on operational performance, as well as significant mediation effect of relationship quality. However, the effect of customer orientation on operational performance decreased, while the effect of relationship quality on operational performance became stronger, under high rather than low environmental uncertainty.
Practical implications
An important implication for managers based on this study is that, in order to be effective, Chinese 3PL providers would need to become more customer oriented and to continually develop and leverage high-quality 3PL relationships in order to enhance their operational performance, especially in situations of high environmental uncertainty.
Originality/value
The paper documents the importance of developing and leveraging high-quality 3PL relationships as a key mediator of the relationship between customer orientation and operational performance. It also documents how environmental uncertainty exerts a powerful moderating influence in this relationship, providing insights into understanding how customer orientation is leveraged by 3PL providers to improve their performance.
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Linlin Wang, Zhaofang Chu, Wan Jiang and Yifan Xu
This study aims to build on equity theory to assess the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) underpayment on the accumulation of firm-specific knowledge, accounting for the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to build on equity theory to assess the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) underpayment on the accumulation of firm-specific knowledge, accounting for the moderating effects of the CEO compensation gap and the clarity of the board’s informal hierarchy.
Design/methodology/approach
This study starts with all firms listed in the Execucomp database for the period 1992 to 2006. Then, all data sources are merged and entries with missing information are excluded. The final data set used for model estimations includes 1,152 firm-year observations. The command xtreg in Stata 12 with the fixed-effect option (fe) is used to estimate the relationship between CEO underpayment and firm-specific knowledge.
Findings
This study proposed and examined the role of CEO underpayment in discouraging CEO willingness to invest firm-specific human capital and, accordingly, to adopt a strategy of accumulating lower levels of firm-specific knowledge assets. The empirical analyses strongly support this argument. Moreover, CEO compensation gaps and the informal hierarchy of boards negatively moderated this relationship. That is, CEO underpayment had a weaker negative effect on firm-specific knowledge when the CEO compensation gap and the clarity of the board’s informal hierarchy were high.
Originality/value
Prior studies from the knowledge-based perspective have focused on the importance of firm-specific knowledge in enabling a firm to achieve superior financial performance. However, relatively little attention has been paid to CEOs’ willingness to accumulate firm-specific knowledge. The present study contributes to the knowledge-based view of the firm. This study integrates equity theory with the knowledge-based view of the firm by highlighting how unfair compensation of CEOs may discourage them to fully realize a firm’s potential to generate specific knowledge. By incorporating the fairness issue of CEO compensation into the knowledge-based view, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the origins of firm-specific knowledge.
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Chongyang Chen, Kem Z.K. Zhang, Zhaofang Chu and Matthew Lee
In the growing information systems (IS) literature on metaverse, augmented reality (AR) technology is regarded as a cornerstone of the metaverse which enables interaction…
Abstract
Purpose
In the growing information systems (IS) literature on metaverse, augmented reality (AR) technology is regarded as a cornerstone of the metaverse which enables interaction services. Interaction has been identified as a core technology characteristic of metaverse shopping environments. Based on previous human–technology interaction research, the authors further explicate interaction to be multimodal sensory. The purpose of this study is thus to better understand the unique nature of interaction in AR technology and highlight the technology's benefits for shopping in metaverse spaces.
Design/methodology/approach
An experiment has been conducted to empirically examine the authors' research model. The authors use the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to analyze the collected data.
Findings
This study conceptualizes image, motion and touchscreen interactions as the three dimensions of multimodal sensory interaction, which can reflect visual-, kinesthetic- and haptic-based sensation stimulation. The authors' findings show that multimodal sensory interaction of AR activates consumers' intention to purchase via a psychological process. To delineate this psychological process, the authors use feelings-as-information theory to posit that experiential factors can influence cognitive factors. More specifically, multimodal sensory interaction is shown to increase multisensory experience and spatial presence, which can effectively reduce product uncertainty and information overload. The two outcomes have been considered to be key issues in online shopping environments.
Originality/value
This study is one of the first ones that shed light on the multimodal sensory peculiarity of AR interactions in the extant IS literature. The authors further highlight the benefits of AR in addressing major online shopping concerns about product uncertainty and information overload, which are largely overlooked by prior research. This study uses feelings-as-information theory to explain the impacts of AR interactions, which reveal the essential role of the experiential process in sensory-enabling technologies. This study enriches the existing theoretical frameworks that mostly focus on the cognitive process. The authors' findings about AR interactions provide noteworthy guidelines for the design of metaverse environments and extend the authors' understanding of how the metaverse may bring benefits beyond traditional online shopping settings.
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Qiang Wang, Baofeng Huo, Fujun Lai and Zhaofang Chu
The paper's aim is to replicate and compare Huo et al.'s study to better understand performance drivers of third‐party logistics (3PL) in mainland China and to disseminate Hong…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper's aim is to replicate and compare Huo et al.'s study to better understand performance drivers of third‐party logistics (3PL) in mainland China and to disseminate Hong Kong 3PL providers' experience to mainland China's peers.
Design/methodology/approach
A structural model is estimated to test the construct relationships using data collected from 105 mainland China's 3PL providers. The results are compared with the results of Huo et al.'s study of Hong Kong 3PL providers.
Findings
While the operations emphasis of low cost may still be effective for mainland China's 3PL providers, it may result in worse financial performance for Hong Kong 3PL providers. In mainland China, low‐ cost emphasis is affected by local competition, but not by operational challenges, while it is influenced by both local competition and operational challenges in Hong Kong. Operational challenges have a positive impact on low‐cost emphasis in Hong Kong, but no impact in mainland China.
Originality/value
The study enriches the literature on China's logistics and provides mainland China's 3PL managers valuable insights from the business practices of their Hong Kong peers.
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Xusen Cheng, Jian Mou, Xiao-Liang Shen, Triparna de Vreede and Rainer Alt