Term of Award

Summer 2023

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Logistics and Supply Chain Management (Ph.D.)

Document Type and Release Option

Dissertation (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Department of Logistics and Supply Chain Management

Committee Chair

Scott Ellis

Committee Member 1

Deepak Iyengar

Committee Member 2

Alan Mackelprang

Committee Member 3

Peter Gianiodis

Abstract

In today's complex and interconnected business environment, the success of buyer-supplier relationships hinges on effective coordination, both within and between firms. Intra- and inter-firm coordination plays a vital role in establishing and maintaining strong partnerships, ensuring smooth operations, and fostering mutually beneficial outcomes. The first and second essays in this dissertation employ systematic review and inductive qualitative approaches, respectively, to explore how intra- and inter-firm coordination is achieved. Essay 1 reviews roughly 200 papers that investigate transactive memory systems – i.e., collective memory systems that encode, store, retrieve, and communicate knowledge between group members. The purpose of this essay is to systematically review extant research on TMSs and create a nomological network of antecedents, consequences, and factors that moderate and mediate transactive memory systems and various outcomes. This systematic literature review cites and resolves the inconsistencies in the conceptualization and operationalization of TMS within the literature, proposes a comprehensive gestalt showing how constructs impact or are impacted by a transactive memory system, and demonstrates the utility of TMS relative to other group mind theories. This holistic review also inspires several practical implications and avenues for future research. Essay 2 uses case study methodology to explore buyer-supplier relationships in the virtual environment through the theoretical lens of relational governance. Firms have increasingly adopted remote work policies; however, little is known about how buyers manage suppliers in the virtual work environment. To investigate this phenomenon, I analyzed 57 semi-structured interviews with supply managers and procurement specialists (i.e., “buyers”) across sixteen industries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through abductive reasoning and systematic qualitative analyses, this essay confirms the role of trust often found in the relational governance literature and identifies four patterns of supply management practices adopted by supply managers pending the level of trust and virtual capabilities inherent in exchange relationships. Accordingly, the findings of this essay facilitate the elaboration of relational governance theory while providing novel insights for the burgeoning virtual work environment literature.

OCLC Number

1413972558

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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