We conduct an empirical investigation of the impact of focal firm and supplier financial dependence on focal firm financial performance using the lens of resource dependence theory. We further investigate the moderating impact of dependence asymmetry on the relationship between lean inventory strategy and focal firm financial performance. We use an innovative supply chain structure data set provided by Bloomberg, which allows implementation of unique measures for focal firm and supplier financial dependence within a supply chain. The results of an analysis of 3,638 buyer–supplier relationships provide support for the hypothesized direct effects of focal firm financial dependence and supplier financial dependence on firm financial performance. Our results also support our hypothesis regarding the moderating effect of dependence asymmetry on the relationship between lean inventory strategies on financial performance. These findings both improve our understanding of the impact of dependence on focal firm performance and shed light on the heretofore unstudied impact of dependence asymmetry's effect on the efficacy of lean inventory strategies.

Stakeholders expect focal firms to improve their environmental performance. While firms may be able to accumulate the environmental expertise needed to achieve this goal internally, doing so may require significant time and resource commitments. Alternatively, buyer firms can leverage their suppliers’ existing environmental expertise and gain access to such expertise when they purchase products and services from these suppliers. The purpose of this study was to develop and test theory regarding under what conditions suppliers’ environmental expertise influences a buying firms’ procurement spend with these suppliers. We ground our study in transaction cost economics and agency theories and empirically test our hypotheses using a unique buyer–supplier dyadic data set. We find that buyer firms are willing to increase their overall business spend with suppliers that have strong environmental expertise, particularly when the buyer firms are more profitable and have higher levels of absorptive capacity. However, we find the opposite effect when the buyer firm’s executive compensation is linked to the firm’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Likewise, we also find that the buyer firm’s environmental concern ratings negatively moderate the relationship between the supplier’s environmental expertise and the buyer’s procurement spend with the supplier.

PurposeThis study aims to examine the extent to which a buying firm can leverage the firm's supplier's innovations to boost the firm's own innovation performance and key moderators to this relationship. Grounded in social embeddedness theory, the authors explore the role of dyadic embeddedness between a buyer and supplier as a facilitator of buyer innovation.Design/methodology/approachNegative binomial regression was used to empirically analyze a large sample of dyadic observations from the USA manufacturing industry. Measures were developed from data acquired from Compustat, LexisNexis and Bloomberg.FindingsThe findings indicate that supplier innovation has a positive impact on a buyer firm's innovation output, particularly when the firms are technically similar and when there is a higher degree of financial interdependence in the buyer–supplier dyad.Originality/valueThis study provides important insights into how supplier firms can facilitate buyer innovation as and how relational factors suggested by social embeddedness theory act to strengthen this effect. Through a theoretical-based empirical examination of supply chain dyads, the findings highlight the importance of financial interdependence and technical similarity when buyers seek to benefit from supplier innovation capabilities.

This article examines the demand for US domestic airline passenger transportation as it pertains to short-haul markets of 500 miles or less, and compares it to the demand in long-haul markets of longer than 500 miles. We investigate how a variety of factors impact passenger volumes, depending on route distance, using a panel set of quarterly data from 1995 to 2010. We find that changes in security screening times, price differences between air travel and automobile travel, and market concentration levels affect short-haul and long-haul markets in statistically different ways, while the impact of low-cost carriers on passenger volumes affects both markets identically.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine how supply chain strategy affects a firm's sustainability performance and how the strength of that relationship is influenced by managerial authentic leadership (AL) and its associated impact on interorganizational citizenship behavior (ICB).Design/methodology/approachBuilding on the intersection of three theories: organizational ambidexterity, AL and ICB, a mediated moderation model is developed and tested using structural equation modeling based on the responses from a cross-sectional survey administered by the authors.FindingsThe results reveal that an ambidextrous supply chain strategy is positively related to firm sustainability performance and this relationship is strengthened by AL. Furthermore, this study finds that this moderating relationship is partially mediated by ICB.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is among the first to empirically test the effect of supply chain ambidexterity on sustainability performance by explicitly considering how leadership characteristics can both directly and indirectly affect the efficacy of this relationship. The findings complement existing literature by providing novel insights into the ability of firm supply chain strategy to affect sustainability performance.