No abstract

This article focuses on an important and emergent standard for sustainable operations management: the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. Unlike similar certifications, its focus is on the entire upstream supply chain, reflecting the criticality of supply chain management to ensure sustainable products. We investigate the financial impact from FSC certification, offering valuable decision support for managers considering this certification. Taking a contingency perspective, we view a firm's supply chain position and its prior certification to the ISO 14001 standard as influencing the results. Drawing on signaling theory, we suggest that firms farther downstream in the supply chain realize significantly greater abnormal financial performance benefits than firms upstream in the supply chain. We further hypothesize that firms that were not ISO 14001 certified at the time of FSC certification realize significantly greater abnormal financial performance benefits than firms that did have the ISO 14001 certification. To test these hypotheses, we utilize financial data of all publicly traded firms in the United States that have obtained the FSC certification, and assess whether FSC certification leads to abnormal performance benefits considering the above contingencies. Data collected from the FSC Certificate Database and Compustat, employed in an event study, provide support for our hypotheses. Overall, our findings contribute to research on decision making in the context of sustainable operations management, and offer a plausible explanation for contradictory results in prior studies. We highlight the applicability of signaling theory to decision sciences research, and stress the need to consider contingencies in sustainability management research.

No abstract

No abstract

This study investigates the process of how the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in automobile and consumer electronics industries design their supply networks. In contrast to the sociological viewpoint, which regards the emergence of networks as a social and psychological phenomenon occurring among non-predetermined individuals, this paper attempts to provide a strategic supply network perspective that views the supply network as a strategic choice made by an OEM. Anchored in the multiplex investigation of supply network architectures, this study looks into the following specific questions: (1) Are an OEM’s strategic intent choices associated with supply network architecture and (2) If so, what differential effects do those strategic intents have on the architectural properties of the supply network? Further field investigations were conducted to provide deeper insights into the quantitative and qualitative findings from statistical analyses.