A Conceptual Model for Researching the Creation and Operation of Supply Networks1

This paper presents a conceptual model for the creation and operation of supply networks. Existing conceptual research relating to interorganizational relationships and networks is reviewed in terms of its relevance to understanding supply networks; this research is drawn from the fields of strategic management, channel management, industrial marketing and purchasing, organizational behaviour and supply‐chain management. The different perspectives each field has on networks are highlighted. Contributions made by each in assisting to understand supply networks are discussed and synthesized. Findings from an exploratory survey are used to structure the design of a conceptual model for analysing the processes involved in the creation and operation of supply networks. The authors identify nine different types of networking activities and discuss the nature of these activities in the context of supply. Four different types of contextual factors relating to supply networks are identified. The model is tested in eight in‐depth case studies and a validating survey of 58 focal firm networks. It is concluded that it provides a robust structure that enabled complex, cross‐case analysis of multi‐variable, multi‐disciplinary data from interorganization product/service supply networks, but that further testing by other researchers is required.     

Do Volunteers Volunteer to do More at Work? The Relationship Between Volunteering,Engagement, and OCBs

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Many non-profit organizations rely on volunteers to further their mission, but volunteer rates linger at only 25% of the...     

Organizational Political Economy and Environmental Pollution

Environmental scholars have made important progress explaining the social forces associated with pollution. Although important exceptions exist, insufficient attention has been given to organizations, which is where most environmental pollution is produced. Even less attentions has been given to parent companies, which have ultimate decision‐making authority over their polluting facilities. To file this gap in the literature, this paper develops an organizational political economy perspective to advance our understanding of how organizational and political‐legal arrangements affect parent companies' capacity to externalize their pollution costs to society. Organizational political economy maintains that corporations' organizational complexity, financial characteristics, management operating systems, political embeddedness in subnational states, and the degree of compliance with national and subnational environmental policies affect their capacity to externalize pollution costs. This perspective also shows how the exercise of organizational power to externalize pollution costs subsidizes the managerial and investor classes by the middle and working classes, whose taxes pay for a large share of environmental clean‐up costs, thereby contributing to economic inequality that goes beyond standard inequality measurements.     

Corporate Transformation to the Multilayered Subsidiary Form: Changing Economic Conditions and State Business Policy

Despite the prevalence of corporate change in the last decade, researchers have not examined whether a change occurred in the corporate form. The analysis here presents a historical case study of a large U.S. corporation and quantitative data on the largest 100 U.S. industrial corporations. The case study examines the effects of changing economic conditions and state business policy on the corporate form. This study demonstrates that the corporation changed to a multilayered subsidiary form (MLSF): a corporation with a hierarchy of two or more levels of subsidiary corporations with a parent company at the top of the hierarchy operating as a management company. Whereas rising debt and increasing competition in the 1970s and 1980s undermined corporations' capacity to accumulate capital, changes in state business policy in the mid-1980s provided the political-legal structure for corporations to restructure their assets as subsidiary corporations tax free. Changes in state business policy also provided a means for corporations to merge, acquire, and spin-off subsidiary corporations tax free. Quantitative data on the 100 largest U.S. industrial corporations show that while the multidivisional form decreased, the MLSF increased between 1981 and 1993. Findings support a capital dependence framework. The MLSF constructs liability firewalls among corporate entities and creates internal capital markets, reducing dependence on external capital markets.     

CORPORATE DIVERSIFICATION REVISITED: The Political–Legal Environment,the Multilayer‐Subsidiary Form,and Mergers and Acquisitions

This article examines causes of product‐line diversification in the largest 200 U.S. corporations between 1986 and 1996. The analysis shows that some corporations decreased their level of diversification. However, in contrast with previous studies, other corporations became more diversified. Change in the number of first‐level subsidiaries and the value of mergers and acquisitions influenced corporate diversification. In contrast with the multidivisional form, the organizational characteristics of the multilayer‐subsidiary form give management greater capacity to socialize capital, pursue mergers and acquisitions, and manage a large and diversified corporation. This multilayer‐subsidiary form limits the managerial problem of bounded rationality by organizing product lines and product groups in legally independent subsidiary corporations that are embedded in their respective markets.     

Elite players’ perceptions of football playing surfaces: a mixed effects ordinal logistic regression model of players’ perceptions

The aim of this study was to determine potential explanatory factors that may be associated with different attitudes amongst the global population of elite footballers to the use of different surfaces for football. A questionnaire was used to capture elite football players’ perceptions of playing surfaces and a mixed effects ordinal logistic regression model was used to explore potential explanatory factors of players’ perceptions. In total, responses from 1129 players from 44 different countries were analysed. The majority of players expressed a strong preference for the use of Natural Turf pitches over alternatives such as Artificial Turf. The regression model, with a players’ country as a random effect, indicated that players were less favourable towards either Natural Turf or Artificial Turf where there was perceived to be greater variability in surface qualities or the surface was perceived to have less desirable properties. Player’s surface experience was also linked to their overall attitudes, with a suggestion that the quality of the Natural Turf surface players experienced dictated players’ support for Artificial Turf.     

THE EFFECTS OF EXPORTS, PUBLIC DEBT, AND DEVELOPMENT ON INCOME INEQUALITY

Classical economics and most modernization theorists hold that a curvilinear relationship exist between income inequality and development level. In this article that relationship is tested. In addition, it is hypothesized that exports and debt as percentages of gross domestic product increases individual income inequality. Regression analyses with controls for development and time were used to test these relationships (N=28 at two time periods). To test these hypotheses with additional data a panel cross-section design was used with data for countries where it is not available a two separate times (N=37 and N=46). The results do not provide evidence to support a curvilinear relationship between development and income distribution when controls for dependency are included in the regression equation. The results from all six regressions presented support the hypothesis that exports enhance income inequality. Moreover, a covariant analysis indicates that exports effect inequality significantly more in undeveloped countries than in developed countries. It is concluded that for less developed countries pursuing export-oriented production, income does not become more evenly distributed at later stages of development.     

Capital Dependence,Financial Risk,and Change from the Multidivisional to the Multilayered Subsidiary Form

Students of the modem corporation continue to assume that corporations have the same form as they did before the turbulent 1980s when the economy became increasingly globalized and competitive. Our analysis shows that corporations are changing from the multidivisional form to a multilayered subsidiary form. Previous research showed that most corporations were multidivisional in the late 1970s. However, by 1993, 42% of the largest 100 industrial corporations had one or no divisions. The mean number of divisions per corporation declined from 8.8 in 1981 to 4 in 1993, while the mean number of domestic subsidiary corporations increased from 23 in 1981 to 51 in 1993. Parent corporations are creating a hierarchy of subsidiary corporations. Most of these changes occurred after the mid-1980s change in state business policy. The theoretical framework historicizes the corporation by identifying how capital accumulation constraints and changes in the institutional arrangements (e.g., the state) within which corporations are embedded created motives and behaviors that resulted in a change in the corporate form. Findings from logistic regression suggest that corporations that have low profits, have low working capital, have a decline in dividend payments, and manufacture high-risk, liability prone product lines have an increased probability of change to the multilayered subsidiary form. Our results provide support for the capital dependence perspective.     

IRRATIONALITY AND CONTRADICTION IN ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE: Transformation in the Corporate Form of a U.S. Steel Corporation, 1930–1987

This article analyzes historical and interview data on one of the largest steel corporations in the U.S. to determine (1) the effects of financial controls on long-term incremental organizational changes, (2) the effects of the environment on the organization, (3) the degree to which organizations structure their environment, and (4) the conditions that transform the corporate form. Findings demonstrate that transformations emerge from crisis due to contradictions within the corporate form and between the corporate form and its environment. The sources of these contradictions include the long-term irrationality of formally rational financial controls, oligopolistic structures, and the state's tax policies. These findings question efficiency arguments in general, but more specifically do not support Alfred Chandler's conception of the "logic of managerial enterprise," which suggests that oligopolistic corporations are efficient because their size provides capital to realize economies of scale, and market share competition sharpens management's skills.     

Supply Chain Management: Relationships, Chains and Networks

The term supply chain management is used to represent a variety of different meanings, some related to management processes, others to structural organization of businesses. This paper identifies and discusses various definitions of supply chain management, summarizes the associated bodies of knowledge and connects them using a systems approach. Systems levels of supply chain management are identified as the internal supply chain, the dyadic relationship, the external supply chain and the inter-business network.
Empirical research on behavioural aspects of relationships, chains and networks in the European automotive aftermarket is discussed, identifying gaps in perceptions of requirements and performance held by customers and suppliers in the areas of quality, delivery, service, range and price. A combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis demonstrates substantial differences between approaches to supply chain management, though performance in relationships, chains and networks in the territories examined does not differ significantly.
Customer dissatisfaction in relationships is shown to increase upstream in the supply chains examined, extending the applicability of the industrial dynamics 'Forrester effect' to softer, behavioural aspects of performance. Conclusions are drawn supporting the suggestions of operations strategists that position in the supply chain is an important strategic variable which, to date, have not been comprehensively proven empirically.