Suchergebnisse

Modern procurement is being shifted from paper‐based, people‐intensive buying systems toward electronic‐based purchase procedures that rely on Internet communications and Web‐enhanced buying tools. Develops a typology of e‐commerce tools that have come to characterize cutting‐edge industrial procurement. E‐commerce aspects of purchasing are organized into communication and transaction tools that encompass both internal and external buying activities. Further, a model of the impact of e‐commerce on the structure and processes of an organization's buying center is developed. The impact of the changing buying center on procurement outcomes in terms of efficiency and effectiveness is also analyzed. Finally, implications for business‐to‐business marketers and researchers are discussed.

Practitioners often are confused by theories that offer ambiguous prescriptions for designing the institutional forms or governance structures in which business activities are conducted. Unclear prescriptions for organizing tasks within the main governance alternatives leave key design decisions unguided: which tasks to perform in‐house (hierarchy), which to contract to outside agencies (market), and which to perform jointly by economic units within and outside the firm (hybrid)? A popular current theory ‐ transaction cost analysis ‐ suggests that governance structures should be aligned to tasks in a "mainly transaction cost economizing way." Argues that the importance of transaction costs is overstated, and that observed patterns of firms' governance structures suggest that firms also account for other theoretical issues ‐ production costs and strategic considerations ‐ in determining efficient boundaries. Begins by illustrating that transaction costs are not always primary. Then discusses the factors that impact production costs and transaction costs, and reviews certain strategic considerations that impact the choice of governance structure for a task. Offers practitioners guidance in choosing governance structures through a contingency analysis that examines the interaction of production costs, transaction costs, and strategic considerations. Illustrates normative implications for designing governance structures through corporate examples that are driven by both cost and strategy considerations.

Trust between partners has become a key construct in interfirm relationship management. However, elucidating the precise nature of the trust-performance link in international strategic alliances remains an important theoretical and empirical challenge for management scholars. Discordant findings evident in existing alliance research raise concerns that interpartner trust does not always enhance venture performance. To investigate this issue, we build and test a theoretical framework that integrates different perspectives of alliance functioning by focusing on the social and bureaucratic forces critical to cooperative processes. The model (1) identifies organizational complexity mechanisms underlying the development of trust in international strategic alliances, (2) points to alliance size as an important factor that conditions the trust-performance relationship, (3) incorporates a new, third-order conceptualization of interpartner trust in alliances, and (4) suggests a theory-based multidimensional assessment of alliance performance. Based on data collected through personal interviews in 177 international strategic alliances, the results suggest that, while interpartner trust is positively associated with alliance performance, this relationship becomes stronger when alliance size declines. We find that both distributive fairness and partner similarity are central to the achievement of a trusting alliance partnership. Managerial insights into developing successful trust-based international alliance exchanges are offered, and fruitful avenues of research are discussed.