Effect of Supply Chain Coordination on Performance

Research on supply chain management (SCM) focuses on “what” factors of a supply chain enable firms to achieve high performance. It examines the effect of two strategically important pillars: supply chain relationships or capabilities. However their isolated investigation leads to a limited understanding of “how” they can be combined to increase firm performance. In this study we argue that beyond their direct effects the relational and the capability-based determinants of a supply chain have a network of indirect relationships that concurrently and differentially affect firm performance. Building on the relational and resource-based views we develop a serial-mediation model examining the mediating effects of trust in supply chain and collaborative advantage (i.e. relational determinants), and supply chain agility and coordinated supply chain (i.e. capability-based determinants) of SCM. Through the use of hierarchical linear regression analysis we show that trust, agility and collaboration act as serial mediators that carry the indirect effect of coordination to firm performance.

Collaborative Advantage and National Patterns of Innovation

Chapter 3 develops the main argument of the book and shows how globalization caused persistent and consequential divergence of national institutions and industrial specializations over time. It proposes that globalization led to a set of benefits for firms, most importantly new opportunities for firms to specialize because of the ability to collaborate with others. The ability to enter new industries through specialization shaped firms’ responses to national industrial policies: even where governments aimed at the creation of comprehensive national industries, firms responded with narrow competitive strategies that built on existing skills and repurposed legacy institutions of the domestic economy.

Collaborative Advantage

In an era of rapid international economic integration, how do countries interact, innovate, and compete in industries, like energy, that are fundamental to national interests? Collaborative Advantage: Forging Green Industries in the New Global Economy examines the development of wind and solar industries, two sectors of historic importance that have long been the target of ambitious public policy. As wind and solar grew from cottage industries into $300 billion global sectors, China, Germany, and the United States each developed distinct constellations of firms with starkly different technical capabilities. The book shows that globalization itself has reinforced such distinct national patterns of industrial specialization. Economically, globalization has created opportunities for firms to specialize through collaboration with others. Politically, new possibilities for specialization have allowed firms to repurpose existing domestic institutions for application in new industries. Against the backdrop of policy efforts that have generally failed to grasp the cross-national nature of innovation, the book offers a novel explanation for both the causes of changes in the global organization of innovation and their impact on domestic politics. As interdependence in global supply chains has again come under fire in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Collaborative Advantage challenges the notion that globalization is primarily about competition, highlighting instead the central role of collaboration in the global economy, particularly in clean energy industries critical to solving the climate crisis.

China’s Specialization in Innovative Manufacturing

Chapter 5 turns to the case of China. It shows that wind and solar firms—often in outright defiance of central government goals—relied on local-level support for large-scale manufacturing in the process of industrial upgrading. Contrary to the ambitions of policymakers seeking to build autonomous domestic industries, these capabilities were brought to bear on product development in collaboration with global partners. The chapter uses firm-level data to explain the establishment of capabilities in innovative manufacturing—research and development skills focused on the commercialization and rapid scale-up to mass production. The second half of the chapter examines the role of collaborative advantage in allowing firms to choose their specialization in innovative manufacturing. It shows how collaborative advantage enabled renewable energy firms to build on local government institutions for mass production that diverged sharply from central government goals.

Overcoming the collaborative challenge: commitment as a super-ordinate enabler of value co-creation

PurposeDespite over 30 years of focus on supply chain collaboration, companies continue to struggle to achieve collaborative advantage. To better understand why some companies are able to collaborate for competitive advantage and others can't, the authors explore how managerial commitment enables collaborative capabilities.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employed a longitudinal inductive study, interviewing companies with reputations for intense supply chain collaboration at four different times over 20 years.FindingsThe authors identified managerial commitment as a super-ordinate enabler. They describe the dynamics of commitment development and explore three types of commitment: instrumental, normative and transformative. The authors document key antecedents and outcomes of each type of commitment.Research limitations/implicationsTheory regarding the antecedents to commitment to collaborative capability is underdeveloped. The authors elaborate these antecedents and the dynamics that enable or undermine the commitment necessary to build effective collaboration capabilities.Practical implicationsThe authors provide insight (i.e. a practical and actionable roadmap) into the process companies use to cultivate commitment to collaboration and value co-creation.Originality/valueCollaboration is critical to value co-creation, including effective supply chain risk mitigation and lasting sustainability efforts. The authors elaborate a theory of commitment dynamics that explains why most companies never go beyond basic levels of collaboration. At the same time, the authors provide a roadmap for deep, transformative collaboration.

Marginalization and Mobilization: The Roots of Female Legislators’ Collaborative Advantage in the States

Scholars have argued that female legislators are more prone to collaborate than their male counterparts. Though collaboration may be more or less evident in particular situations, we seek to more clearly establish the mechanism behind women’s collaborative activity using the framework of marginalization. In this paper, we use cosponsorship data from 74 state legislative chambers from 2011–2014 to analyze collaborative patterns and mobilizing institutions. We find female legislators are more collaborative than men, and that their collaborative advantage strengthens in chambers where women are systematically excluded from leadership positions. The advantage also extends to bipartisan collaboration, but only in less polarized settings with women’s caucuses. Furthermore, our findings imply that as women are integrated into leadership collaboration will actually decline, especially within their own party. We believe these results are important for understanding both the roots of collaborative behavior among female legislators and consequences of chambers that marginalize women from leadership positions.

Public Policy Reform and Police Prevention Practice: A Journey Upstream?

This article contributes to a growing body of research on the police reforms in Scotland. It examines the particular place given to prevention in public policy and its impact on police practice. We show how public policy reconfigured the place and purpose of prevention for the police, with a focus on safety, wellbeing, and the prevention of harm. The research draws on qualitative data collected in four areas as part of a 4-year evaluation of the police reforms. We refine a public health typology of prevention and operationalize it empirically for the first time to analyse cases of innovative practice. We distinguish a pattern of prevention practice heavily weighted towards secondary prevention, focused predominantly on issues of crime and disorder. In fewer cases, the police applied primary and tertiary prevention, with a focus on vulnerability and harm. Looking in detail at two cases, we illustrate the importance of collaboration for the police, which created opportunities and brought additional resources and expertise to support new prevention approaches which had a significant impact on effectiveness. The police realized collaborative advantage through common aims, trust-building, and leadership. We do not suggest this demonstrates a transformation in police prevention; it illustrates successful police innovation, and identifies the potential to go further. The implications for policy and practice are to recognize the value to the police of investing in new partnerships. They create opportunities for the police to collaborate, innovate, and focus more sharply on the prevention of harm.

Enhancing resilience through capacity building in LCCAP formulation in the local government of Aurora, Philippines

Climate Disaster Risk Assessment (CDRA) and Local Climate Change Action Plan (LCCAP) provide the scientific and legal platform for climate change adaptation and mitigation in the Philippines. This APN CAPaBLE project responds to the limited technical capacity of local government units (LGUs) to comply with this requirement through collaborative capacity building. Evaluation of CDRA and LCCAP led to a National Interagency Technical and Policy Forum to formulate action plans and fast-track preparations. The initial stage of the project demonstrated collaborative advantage as a condition for mobilizing human and financial resources was enabled. Collaborative inertia set in once the technical limitations of Aurora LGUs surfaced to complete the CDRA. This mirrored the results of the institutional capacity survey, administered to 87 disaster risk reduction and management Technical Working Group (TWG) members, highlighting the LGUs limitations in data availability and functional knowledge on climate change. Thus, a shift in capacity building strategy through focused mentoring and managing LGU expectations was done. The Aurora LGUs successfully completed its CDRA and LCCAP requirements through a lengthy and arduous process. It was acknowledged that CDRA preparation has a steep learning curve and competes heavily with other multiple functions and pressing demands from the LGUs. The national interagency forum resolution suggested that the CDRA be assigned to another government agency while LGUs shift capacity development initiatives to understanding and mainstreaming scientific assessment into local plans. The project experience highlights the difficult, yet promising, path to human security development and resilience building and underscored prudence and urgency of adaptation planning at the local level.