Coopetitive Buyer–Supplier Relationship: An Investigation of Bargaining Power,Relational Context,and Investment Strategies

This study proposes an analytical approach combined with a behavioral experiment for a joint examination of the competitive and cooperative (i.e., coopetitive) relationship between a buyer and a supplier. Specifically, the article considers the scenario in which the buyer and the supplier invest in strategic capabilities to increase their relative bargaining power. The article examines how dynamic investments in strategic assets are influenced by the locus of bargaining power and by the underlying context (synergistic vs. adversarial) of the interfirm relationship. The dynamic evolution of bargaining power is also examined. A dynamic game model is considered to examine the evolution of investment strategies in critical resources and to investigate the issues of bargaining power in a buyer–supplier dyad. Equilibrium expressions for the investment strategies of the buyer and the supplier are presented and their implications for buyer–supplier relationships are examined. The behavioral experiment complements the analytical model and examines the correspondence between optimal behavior suggested by the analytical model and the boundedly rational behavior of decision makers in an experimental context. The results from the model and behavioral experiments suggest that the strategies are a function of the risk‐adjusted returns obtained from investments. The experiment shows that, in a synergistic relational context when the buyer maintains bargaining power, the investment shifts of the buyer and the supplier accord well with theoretical predictions. In an adversarial relational context, the results of the experimental study do not correspond well with that predicted by the theoretical model. The implications of the results are discussed and directions for future research are presented.     

AN ANALYSIS OF SHAREHOLDER AGREEMENTS

Shareholder agreements govern the relations among shareholders in privately held firms, such as joint ventures and venture capital‐backed companies. We provide an economic explanation for key clauses in such agreements—namely, put and call options, tag‐along and drag‐along rights, demand and piggy‐back rights, and catch‐up clauses. In a dynamic moral hazard setting, we show that these clauses can ensure that the contract parties make efficient ex ante investments in the firm. They do so by constraining renegotiation. In the absence of the clauses, ex ante investment would be distorted by unconstrained renegotiation aimed at (i) precluding value‐destroying ex post transfers, (ii) inducing value‐increasing ex post investments, or (iii) precluding hold‐out on value‐increasing sales to a trade buyer or the IPO market. (JEL: G34)     

专用性投资、信任与创业企业控制权治理

基于控制权收益交互作用视角,研究创业投资模式下的异质性创业企业控制权治理问题,分析控制权共享收益和私人收益综合影响下投资家投资专用性和合作双方信任度对创业企业剩余控制权和特定控制权治理的作用机理,以193家不同产业类型创业企业为样本,运用混合回归模型,实证检验投资专用性、信任及其交互作用对异质性创业企业两类控制权治理的影响。研究结果表明,由于异质性企业的控制权收益类型和大小存在差异,导致投资专用性和信任对不同产业类型创业企业控制权治理的影响存在差异;创业企业家控制权私人收益较大、创业投资家的战略收益较小时,创业投资家获得的剩余控制权与其投入资本的专用性、合作双方间的信任度呈非线性倒U形关系;创业企业家控制权私人收益较小、创业投资家的战略收益较大时,创业投资家获得的剩余控制权与其投入资本的专用性、合作双方间的信任度呈非线性U形关系;投资专用性与合作双方信任度的交互项与创业投资家拥有的剩余控制权和特定控制权负相关,在高新技术创业企业样本中交互效应尤为显著。     

基于采购商投资的双源采购与供应商定价决策

随着供应链的全球化发展,供应链成员企业的合作越来越紧密。许多采购商通过直接对供应商投资提高供应的可靠性或降低采购成本。本文研究双供应商-单采购商的两级供应链中采购商投资、供应商定价以及采购商采购决策。在此供应链中,供应商和采购商之间存在先后决策的Stackelberg博弈,供应商之间存在同时决策的贝特兰德博弈。本文考虑异质供应商,即供应成本与稳定性存在差异,接受采购商投资后两者的改进效应也不同,建立了采购商投资、供应商定价、采购商采购三阶段博弈模型,基于凸优化理论和博弈分析方法对问题进行分析,并应用邻域搜索的自适应差分计划算法对问题进行求解。研究了供应链成员企业的最优均衡决策,分析供应成本、供应稳定性以及投资改进效应对最优均衡决策的影响。     

Inter-firm co-ordination: international versus domestic buyer–seller relationships

The use of transaction cost analysis (TCA) to study the choice of governance mode in foreign countries has been a source of considerable research. Empirical tests of the TCA predictions within a single governance mode are, however, limited. Building on transaction costs arguments, and related work in international marketing literature, we examine the association between asset specificity and inter-firm co-ordination in domestic and international buyer–seller relationships. The extant literature is extended by also comparing the impact of environmental uncertainty on inter-firm co-ordination across domestic and international relationships. Empirical findings from a survey of 164 industrial buyers demonstrate that there is a positive association between asset specificity and inter-firm co-ordination, and further that this association is stronger in international relationships than in domestic business-to-business trade. Furthermore, the results indicate that environmental uncertainty is stronger related to inter-firm co-ordination in international buyer–seller relationships compared to domestic buyer–seller relationships.     

Ownership structure and investment-cash flow sensitivity

This study investigates the effect of ownership structure on the use of cash flow in financing corporate investments—the investment-cash flow sensitivity—in a concentrated ownership context. Using a sample of 6797 French listed firms from 2000 to 2013, results show that investment-cash flow sensitivity decreases with the cash-flow rights of the controlling shareholder and increases with the separation of its cash-flow and control rights (excess control rights). Firms are, thus, less likely to use cash flow in investments when the interests of controlling shareholders are aligned with those of minority shareholders. However, they appear to use considerable internal funds for their investments when they have severe agency problems, driven by excess control rights of the controlling shareholders. Overall, our findings help advance the understanding of the role of agency relationship in shaping corporate financial policy.     

Managing Disruptions in Decentralized Supply Chains with Endogenous Supply Process Reliability

Supply disruptions are all too common in supply chains. To mitigate delivery risk, buyers may either source from multiple suppliers or offer incentives to their preferred supplier to improve its process reliability. These incentives can be either direct (investment subsidy) or indirect (inflated order quantity). In this study, we present a series of models to highlight buyers’ and suppliers’ optimal parameter choices. Our base‐case model has deterministic buyer demand and two possibilities for the supplier yield outcomes: all‐or‐nothing supply or partial disruption. For the all‐or‐nothing model, we show that the buyer prefers to only use the subsidy option, which obviates the need to inflate order quantity. However, in the partial disruption model, both incentives—subsidy and order inflation—may be used at the same time. Although single sourcing provides greater indirect incentive to the selected supplier because that avoids order splitting, we show that the buyer may prefer the diversification strategy under certain circumstances. We also quantify the amount by which the wholesale price needs to be discounted (if at all) to ensure that dual sourcing strategy dominates sole sourcing. Finally, we extend the model to the case of stochastic demand. Structural properties of ordering/subsidy decisions are derived for the all‐or‐nothing model, and in contrast to the deterministic demand case, we establish that the buyer may increase use of subsidy and order quantity at the same time.     

两级供应链产品质量控制契约模型分析

基于博弈论和委托代理理论,研究在两级供应链中如何进行质量控制契约设计的问题。建立生产商和购买商的期望收益函数模型,生产商对其生产过程投资水平进行决策并确定其产品质量预防水平;购买商进行质量评价决策并确定其产品质量检验水平。生产商存在降低其生产过程投资水平的道德风险问题,在生产过程中将"削减投资",购买商为激励生产商提高其生产过程投资水平将支付"信息租金"的成本。购买商在进行产品质量检验决策时,存在夸大产品质量缺陷率的道德风险问题,在产品质量检验过程中将"过度检验"。运用最优化原理,求解生产商的最优生产过程投资水平、产品质量预防水平和价格折扣额与购买商的最优质量检验水平和外部损失分摊比例,并进行了算例分析,结果表明:当生产商提高其生产过程投资水平时,其质量预防水平将显著增加,购买商的质量检验水平将显著下降;随着购买商质量检验水平的提高,生产商所提供的价格折扣额先增大后减少,生产商所承担的外部损失分摊比例将会下降,其期望收益增加,购买商的期望收益将会减少,供应链联合期望收益将呈现"倒U"型,求解了期望收益的最大值及各契约参数的值,结果证明所提出的质量控制契约模型是可行的。     

CONTROL RIGHTS IN COMPLEX PARTNERSHIPS

This paper develops a theory of the allocation of authority between two players who are in a complex partnership, that is, a partnership which produces impure public goods. We show that the optimal allocation depends on technological factors, the parties’ valuations of the goods produced, and the degree of impurity of these goods. When the degree of impurity is large, control rights should be given to the main investor, irrespective of preference considerations. There are some situations in which this allocation is optimal even if the degree of impurity is very low as long as one party’s investment is more important than the other party’s. If the parties’ investments are of similar importance and the degree of impurity is large, shared authority is optimal with a greater share going to the low‐valuation party. If the importance of the parties’ investments is similar but the degree of impurity is neither large nor small, the low‐valuation party should receive sole authority. We analyze an extension in which side payments are infeasible. We check for robustness of our results in several dimensions, such as allowing for multiple parties or for joint authority, and apply our results to interpret a number of complex partnerships, including those involving schools and child custody.     

Supply Chain Structure Incentives for Corporate Social Responsibility: An Incomplete Contracting Analysis

Downstream firms increasingly recognize the importance of integrating social and environmental concerns with their businesses. As a consequence, they urge to create incentives for their suppliers to invest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Contracts to provide these incentives are rarely observed in practice. If not totally absent, contracts may be incomplete, in that unforeseen contingencies or some CSR attributes that are difficult to measure may not be included in the contract. We show that incentives for CSR investments can also be provided through the supply chain structure, which consists of the distribution of ownership rights over the firms' assets of production, and involves horizontal and/or vertical alliances among supply chain members. Motivated by examples in agricultural contexts, this study adopts the property rights approach to study the impact of supply chain structures on the adoption of CSR activities. We show that the structure that best incentivizes CSR investments depends on the interaction between CSR vertical synergy, free‐riding, and countervailing power. One of the main findings is that the alliance between suppliers is beneficial only if the revenues generated by a downstream investment are sufficiently high. In fact, only in this case, the suppliers can appropriate a sufficiently large stake of the revenues generated downstream, thanks to their countervailing power. When the upstream investment costs become high, however, the suppliers will invest in CSR only if the downstream distributor is vertically integrated. The resulting structure of a cooperative will best incentivize CSR investments only if the CSR vertical synergy between the two tiers of the supply chain is sufficiently high.     

Information Acquisition and Voluntary Disclosure in an Export‐Processing System

We study a strategic information management problem in the export‐processing trade, where the buyer controls the raw material input and sales and the producer is responsible for production. The production is vulnerable to random yield risk. The producer can exert a costly effort to acquire the private yield rate information and discretionarily share it with the buyer. We develop a sequential Bayesian game model that captures three key features of the system—endogenous information endowment, voluntary disclosure, and ex post information sharing—a significant departure from the literature. The optimal disclosure strategy is driven by the trade‐off between the gains from Pareto efficiency improvement and self‐interested overproduction. It is specified by two thresholds on yield rate: only the middle‐yield producers (with yield rate between these two thresholds) share private information to improve supply‐demand match; the low‐ and high‐yield producers withhold information to extract excess input from the buyer. The buyer in response penalizes nondisclosure with reduced input and rewards information sharing with a larger order. This strategic interaction is further exacerbated by the double marginalization effect from decentralization, resulting in severe efficiency loss. We examine the effectiveness of three corrective mechanisms—vertical integration, mandatory disclosure, and production restriction—and reveal the costs of information suppressive effect and overinvestment incentive and the benefit from concessions on the processing fee. Our study endogenizes the asymmetric supply risk and provides the first attempt to rationalize the strategic interactions of informational and operational incentives in the export‐processing system.     

Managing Risk of Supply Disruptions: Incentives for Capacity Restoration

A supplier facing the prospect of disruption has to decide whether or not to invest in restoration capability. With restoration capability, if disruption occurs, additional costly effort can be exerted to rebuild capacity, although its outcome is uncertain. We study how a firm (buyer) can use incentive mechanisms to motivate a supplier's investment in capacity restoration, and compare this approach with the traditional approach of diversifying part of the order to an expensive but reliable supplier. Under a Restoration Enhancement (RE) strategy, the buyer uses price and/or order quantity incentives to encourage the supplier's restoration investment decision. Two different cases are considered—when the incentive is committed to ex ante (prior to disruption) and when it is committed to ex post (after disruption). In contrast, under a Supplier Diversification (SD) strategy, the buyer splits orders between a reliable supplier and an unreliable supplier to hedge against the disruption risk. Here, the buyer does not provide any separate incentive to the unreliable supplier. Our analysis indicates that under the RE strategy, where the buyer offers incentives, both the buyer and the supplier (weakly) prefer the ex ante commitment over the ex post one. Furthermore, the RE strategy is preferred over the SD strategy when the unreliable supplier's restoration outcome is more predictable or when a high restoration outcome is more likely. However, the buyer's preference for the SD strategy increases as market demand increases.     

Drivers and Outcomes of Long‐term Orientation in Cooperative Relationships

We argue in this paper that a buyer may deliberately develop long‐term orientation as a governance mechanism to deal with risks arising from exchange hazards, and to reduce the opportunistic behaviour of a supplier. While the exchange hazards of asset specificity pose a safeguarding problem, those of market uncertainty pose an adaptation problem. We test our model on a sample of 221 procurement partnerships. Our results show that satisfactory prior history of a supplier, asset specificity of the buyer and market uncertainty are all positively related to a buyer's long‐term orientation towards a supplier. Consistent with the idea that asset specificity and market uncertainty pose different governance problems, we find that satisfactory prior history reduces the positive relationship between asset specificity and a buyer's long‐term orientation, but enhances the positive relationship between market uncertainty and a buyer's long‐term orientation. We also find that a buyer's long‐term orientation fully mediates the relationship between satisfactory prior history and a supplier's opportunistic behaviour. Finally, implications on the theory and the practices of relationship governance are discussed.     

竞争环境下双边平台增值服务质量投资竞争研究

为了提高竞争环境下双边平台效益与竞争优势,讨论了平台企业对双边用户增值服务质量投资竞争决策问题。在考虑三种不同用户归属条件的基础上,构建了双边平台增值服务投资竞争模型。通过比较分析发现：当双边用户单归属时,无论对平台单边还是双边进行增值服务投资,投资高质量增值服务均是两平台的占优策略。当单边用户多归属时,若对消费者边进行增值服务投资,则投资低质量增值服务为平台的占优策略;若对供应商边或双边进行增值服务投资,则投资高质量增值服务为平台的占优策略。当双边用户多归属时,无论对平台单边还是双边进行增值服务投资,投资低质量增值服务均是两平台的占优策略。     

Idiosyncratic Shocks and the Role of Nonconvexities in Plant and Aggregate Investment Dynamics

We study a model of lumpy investment wherein establishments face persistent shocks to common and plant‐specific productivity, and nonconvex adjustment costs lead them to pursue generalized (S, s) investment rules. We allow persistent heterogeneity in both capital and total factor productivity alongside low‐level investments exempt from adjustment costs to develop the first model consistent with the cross‐sectional distribution of establishment investment rates. Examining the implications of lumpy investment for aggregate dynamics in this setting, we find that they remain substantial when factor supply considerations are ignored, but are quantitatively irrelevant in general equilibrium. The substantial implications of general equilibrium extend beyond the dynamics of aggregate series. While the presence of idiosyncratic shocks makes the time‐averaged distribution of plant‐level investment rates largely invariant to market‐clearing movements in real wages and interest rates, we show that the dynamics of plants' investments differ sharply in their presence. Thus, model‐based estimations of capital adjustment costs involving panel data may be quite sensitive to the assumption about equilibrium. Our analysis also offers new insights about how nonconvex adjustment costs influence investment at the plant. When establishments face idiosyncratic productivity shocks consistent with existing estimates, we find that nonconvex costs do not cause lumpy investments, but act to eliminate them.     

Competitive Goals and Plant Investment in Environment and Safety Practices: Moderating Effect of National Culture

Operations managers clearly play a critical role in targeting plant‐level investments toward environment and safety practices. In principle, a “rational” response would be to align this investment with senior management's competitive goals for operational performance. However, operations managers also are influenced by contingent factors, such as their national culture, thus creating potential tension that might bias investment away from a simple rational response. Using data from 1,453 plants in 24 countries, we test the moderating influence of seven of the national cultural characteristics on investment at the plant level in environment and safety practices. Four of the seven national cultural characteristics from GLOBE (i.e., uncertainty avoidance, in‐group collectivism, future orientation and performance orientation) shifted investment away from an expected “rational” response. Positive bias was evident when the national culture favored consistency and formalized procedures and rewarded performance improvement. In contrast, managers exhibited negative bias when familial groups and local coalitions were powerful, or future outcomes—rather than current actions—were more important. Overall, this study highlights the critical importance of moving beyond a naïve expectation that plant‐level investment will naturally align with corporate competitive goals for environment and safety. Instead, the national culture where the plant is located will influence these investments, and must be taken into account by senior management.     

Marketing as an Investment in Shareholder Value

We present resource‐based and capability‐based arguments of marketing investment intensity to offer a strategic view of marketing as an investment in shareholder value. We find that marketing investment intensity has a U‐shaped quadratic effect on shareholder value creation (Tobin's q) that calls for marketing investment to be protected and increased, not surrendered. We show how marketing investments interact with investments in R&D, human capital and operations to reveal how strategic co‐investments can alter the shareholder value of marketing. Finally, we show how competitive intensity and failings in the firm's investment productivity (its ability to convert investment expenditure into sales) point to malaise in the firm's own strategic architecture as a fault for perceived poor returns from marketing investments. Our findings suggest that marketing investment should not be scapegoated when its contributions to shareholder value are not as expected. When invested in strategically and in combination with other investments, marketing can unlock exciting improvements in shareholder value.     

Environmental Factors,Managerial Processes,and Information Technology Investment Strategies

Although significant research attention has been directed at understanding the value of information technology (IT) investments for firms, very little attention has been paid to understand the IT investment behavior of firms. This article seeks to fill this void. We introduce the concept of IT investment strategy, defined by dimensions of intensity and proactiveness, to characterize the IT investment behavior of firms. Synthesizing the environmental deterministic and strategic choice perspectives of a firm's strategic decision making, we examine the effects of environmental factors, managerial processes, and the interplay between them on IT investment strategy. Specifically, we examine the impact of environmental factors such as industry clockspeed and information intensity on IT investment strategy. We also incorporate the strategic choice perspective to argue that managerial processes such as frequent chief executive officer—chief information officer communications and collective information systems planning play a critical role in shaping the firm's IT investment strategy. The empirical results show that the environmental variables are related to IT investment strategy. Besides, managerial processes serve as a means to understand the environment and thus moderate the relationships between the environmental variables and the various facets of IT investment strategy. The conceptualization of IT investment strategy and the focus on both environmental determinism and strategic choice should enrich our understanding of firms’ IT investing behavior.     

买方势力、资产专用性与技术创新——基于中国汽车工业的实证检验

在纵向关联市场中,买方势力和资产专用性是影响企业技术创新的重要因素。本文以我国汽车工业2000-2008年统计数据为样本,利用面板数据模型对买方市场势力、资产专用性与技术创新的关系进行了实证检验,研究结果表明:技术创新行为不仅取决于企业自身所处的市场条件,还与作为买方的下游行业市场竞争状况有关,买方市场势力的增强有利于上游企业技术创新活动的开展;下游企业的资产专用性对上游企业技术创新具有显著的负效应,固定资产比例越高,研发投入越少。此外,较快的市场需求增长率和买方技术能力对技术创新具有积极影响,上下游行业之间较为对等的市场势力会阻碍技术创新。     

A Rational Theory of Mutual Funds' Attention Allocation

The question of whether and how mutual fund managers provide valuable services for their clients motivates one of the largest literatures in finance. One candidate explanation is that funds process information about future asset values and use that information to invest in high‐valued assets. But formal theories are scarce because information choice models with many assets are difficult to solve as well as difficult to test. This paper tackles both problems by developing a new attention allocation model that uses the state of the business cycle to predict information choices, which in turn, predict observable patterns of portfolio investments and returns. The predictions about fund portfolios' covariance with payoff shocks, cross‐fund portfolio and return dispersion, and their excess returns are all supported by the data. These findings offer new evidence that some investment managers have skill and that attention is allocated rationally.