Do Managers’ Dark Personality Traits Help Firms in Coping with Adverse Supply Chain Events?

Abstract

This research investigates purchasing managers’ responses to adverse supply chain events. We build on attribution theory to examine how individual‐level factors—managerial personality traits, cognitive modes, and attribution of supplier responsibility—combine with firm‐level factors—buffering and bridging—to affect coping success. We combine an inductive process‐tracing approach with the neo‐configurational method of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Findings suggest that dark personality traits—traits that are generally regarded as socially aversive—are useful in coping with adverse supply chain events in combination with cross‐functionally integrated bridging, while the absence of dark personality traits is useful in combination with cross‐functionally integrated buffering. Our study contributes to the extant supply chain management literature in three ways: First, it highlights the role of dark personality traits in how purchasing managers react to supply chain risks. Second, it advances behavioral SCM literature by presenting nuanced findings on the effect of rational vs. intuitive cognitive processes in coping with such adverse events. Third, it contributes to attribution theory by providing a differentiated view on behavioral reactions following responsibility attributions. For managers, we find that high coping success might be achieved by seeking a fit between dark personality traits and firm actions. In addition, the results of the fsQCA demonstrate that supply chain research using configurational studies serves as a productive complement to traditional net effect analyses.

I Wasn’t Expecting That! The Relational Impact of Negotiation Strategy Expectation Violations

“…Locus of causality, the most commonly studied attributional dimension, helps individuals pinpoint the perceived cause of an event, i.e., the buyer's evaluation of whether the supplier was responsible for the event (Mir et al, 2016). The locus of causality can be internal to an organization (e.g., a failure by the supplier) or external (e.g., a plant's destruction by a tornado), with internal loci of causality typically leading to higher attributions of responsibility (Timmer & Kaufmann, 2019;Weiner, 2018;Wowak et al, 2016). Stability involves the perceived variation or longevity of a causal event and is often studied alongside the locus of causality (Esslinger et al, 2019;Harvey et al, 2014;Heider, 1958;Weiner, 1985Weiner, , 2018, examining whether the event's cause is static or dynamic over time (Timmer & Kaufmann, 2019).…”

“…The locus of causality can be internal to an organization (e.g., a failure by the supplier) or external (e.g., a plant's destruction by a tornado), with internal loci of causality typically leading to higher attributions of responsibility (Timmer & Kaufmann, 2019;Weiner, 2018;Wowak et al, 2016). Stability involves the perceived variation or longevity of a causal event and is often studied alongside the locus of causality (Esslinger et al, 2019;Harvey et al, 2014;Heider, 1958;Weiner, 1985Weiner, , 2018, examining whether the event's cause is static or dynamic over time (Timmer & Kaufmann, 2019). "Perceptions of causal stability help shape a person's expectations for future outcomes, and these expectations can soften or amplify the emotional response to a trigger event" (Harvey et al, 2014;Weiner, 1985, p. 131).…”

“…"Perceptions of causal stability help shape a person's expectations for future outcomes, and these expectations can soften or amplify the emotional response to a trigger event" (Harvey et al, 2014;Weiner, 1985, p. 131). Controllability involves whether the cause is under one's volitional control to determine if the circumstance is avoidable (Mir et al, 2016;Timmer & Kaufmann, 2019;Weiner, 2018). Per Pick et al (2016), controllability significantly correlates to stability.…”

“…Relational Impact of Strategy Violations of the marketplace (Patrucco et al, 2020). Supply chain events that are negative and unexpected, such as abrupt price changes, can significantly impact a firm's performance (Timmer & Kaufmann, 2019). ERFs help to explain expectancy violations, and their impact may depend on the types of both strategy violations and external ERFs.…”

El análisis cualitativo de nexos causales: El aporte del process-tracing a las ciencias de la gestión

“…En estos estudios, la mayoría tiene un enfoque cuantitativo (testeo experimental mediante simulación por computadora, rastreo del cursor, registro de navegación, rastreo ocular y protocolos verbalizados, entre otros), y solo 13 publicaciones en Scopus y 11 en Web of Science adoptan la aproximación cualitativa materia del presente trabajo, todas ellas publicadas recién en los últimos cinco años. Estos estudios cubren un amplio espectro de temas que incluyen innovación (Liu, 2019;Di Paola & Spena, 2019;Makarevich, 2017), sostenibilidad (Muñoz, Cacciotti, & Cohen, 2018;Dossa & Kaufer, 2014), diseño de procesos (Soutrisna & Goulding, 2019), planeamiento (Derbyshire, 2020), capacidad institucional (Evans, 2017), cambio organizacional (Kusano & Sanada, 2019), gestión de riesgo (Timmer & Kaufmann, 2019), alianzas estratégicas (Rey-García, Calvo, & Mato-Santiso, 2019), gestión de stakeholders (Nguyen, Chileshe, Rameezdeen, & Wood, 2019) y satisfacción del consumidor (Tessem, 2018). Conviene notar que todos estos trabajos están publicados en inglés y no se ocupan de organizaciones en la región iberoamericana.…”