This paper focuses on the importance of decoupling recurrent supply risk and disruption risk when planning appropriate mitigation strategies. We show that bundling the two uncertainties leads a manager to underutilize a reliable source while over utilizing a cheaper but less reliable supplier. As in Dada et al. (working paper, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL, 2003), we show that increasing quantity from a cheaper but less reliable source is an effective risk mitigation strategy if most of the supply risk growth comes from an increase in recurrent uncertainty. In contrast, we show that a firm should order more from a reliable source and less from a cheaper but less reliable source if most of the supply risk growth comes from an increase in disruption probability.

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Purpose Increasing environmental uncertainty, more demanding customers, rapid technological growth and rising capital costs have all forced firms to evolve from collaborating with buyers and suppliers to collaborating with their competitors and that is called coopetition. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the antecedents and outcomes associated with coopetition. Design/methodology/approach Building from the existing literature and three theoretical foundations, resource-based theory, resource dependence theory and game theory, the authors develop a model showing the antecedents and outcomes of coopetition and associated propositions of coopetition. Using a semi-structured interview process of 21 industry executives, the authors offer empirical support for the proposed coopetition model and propositions. Findings Firms are increasingly dependent on the knowledge and expertise in external organizations to innovate, solve problems and improve supply chain performance. This research suggests that there is a value for firms to consider coopetition as a part of their inter-firm strategies. Research limitations/implications The semi-structured interview process used in this research provided a wealth of information and executive experiences in coopetition. The interviews, however, only provide a single perspective of collaborative engagements with competitors. Multiple perspectives of each project would add value to this research. Originality/value Collaboration among buyers and suppliers have been well researched; however, there has not been as much research on coopetition. This research provides a new area for future research for academics and offers suggestions for managers to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their coopetition projects.

We examine the recent supply chain phenomenon of outsourcing front-end business processes in this paper. Few, if any, of the existing theories provide satisfactory explanation for the rapid growth in this area. We use a model proposed by Sridhar and Balachandran [Sridhar, S.S., Balachandran, B.V. 1997. Incomplete information, task assignment, and managerial control systems. Manage. Sci. 43(6), 764-778] to determine the factors that might contribute to this phenomenon. Our analysis reveals that the ability of the vendor to forecast the task environment without bias and to gain sophistication in interpreting contract terms might make the firm indifferent between outsourcing and retaining front-end processes in-house. We validate our findings against the work of Apte and Mason [Apte, U.M., Mason, R.O., 1995. Global disaggregation of information-intensive services. Manage. Sci. 41 (7), 1250-1262], who develop a theoretical framework to identify criteria for companies to select services to be outsourced. They base their decisions predominantly on the nature of ''customer contact.'' The combined theories are shown to provide a rich framework for identifying customer-facing tasks that can be outsourced. #

In this paper we study threshold-based sales-force incentives and their impact on a dealer's optimal effort.A phenomenon, observed in practice, is that the dealer exerts a large effort towards the end of the incentive period to boost sales and reach the threshold to make additional profits. In the literature, the resulting last period sales spike, is sometimes called the hockey stick phenomenon (HSP.) We show that lack of information leads to the HSP and characterize its form over multiple time periods. Under perfect information it is possible to completely eliminate the HSP, however, this may be difficult in practice. We show that the manufacturer can control the HSP by using imperfect information to set the threshold and delay its computation until the last period. We discuss an implementation plan that allows the manufacturer to do so. We then study the impact of competition on the HSP and show conditions under which the HSP can be dampened or exacerbated. We also characterize the variance of the total sales across all the periods and demonstrate conditions under which offering a bonus contract may be beneficial in controlling the variance.