Logistics, Business & Public Policy
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Item The Impact of Globalization on Inventory and Financial Performance: A Firm-Level and Industry-Level Analysis(2009) Han, Chaodong; Dresner, Martin E; Dong, Yan; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates how globalization affects inventory and financial performance from both firm and industry perspectives. Drawing upon elements from classic inventory models, transaction costs, geographic economics, and international business and strategy literatures, this dissertation aims to contribute to the construction of a theory of global supply chain management through an empirical testing of hypotheses on the effects of global sourcing, exports and manufacturing offshoring (i.e., foreign subsidiaries) on inventory performance and financial performance, using data from multinational firms and U.S. manufacturing industries. Motivated by the lack of empirical research on inventory management in a global context, and an uncertain relationship between globalization and financial performance reported in the international business and strategy literature, the first essay examines how globalization affects firm financial performance directly and indirectly through inventory management. Globalization is further examined by a two-dimensional measure: global intensity and extensity. Due to increased uncertainties associated with global supply chains, globalization may significantly increase firm inventory levels. Even though manufacturing offshoring may benefit multinational firms through economies of scale and geographic diversification, escalating transaction costs and shrinking arbitrage opportunities may overwhelm benefits and lead to reduced financial performance. This direct-indirect effect model is tested using a large panel dataset of thousands of multinational firms over 1987-2007, collected from the COMPUSTAT global and segment databases. Essay 1 contributes to the supply chain management literature by providing a two-dimensional measure of globalization: foreign market penetration (depth) and geographic expansion (breadth), and may enhance our understanding of global supply chains. The second essay analyzes the impact of global inbound and outbound supply chains on inventory performance within the U.S. economy. This research argues that global activity (i.e., global sourcing and exports) has offsetting effects on domestic inventory levels: an increasing impact due to risk considerations and a decreasing impact due to cost pressure from rising inventory costs. According to location theory, rooted in geographic economics, and "new trade theory" on intra-firm trade, firms may be able to efficiently allocate inventories to low cost regions along their global supply chains. To the extent that allocative efficiency may only be realized once a certain level of global activity is reached, it is hypothesized that the impact of international trade on domestic inventory is inverted-U shaped. i.e., as globalization increases, inventory levels first increase due to the longer and more complex supply chains, then decrease as firms determine how to more efficiently allocate their inventory across borders. The hypotheses are tested using inventories at all three stages (raw materials, finished goods and work-in-process inventory) and industry operating data from U.S. manufacturers over the period 1997-2005. Regression results indicate a strong invert-U shaped relationships existing between import intensity (measured by imported raw materials as a percentage of industry total cost of materials) and raw materials inventory in days of supply, and between export intensity (measured by exported finished goods as a percentage of total value of industry shipments) and finished goods inventory in days of supply. Essay 2 makes two contributions: theoretically, it is the first effort to connect international trade with inventory performance; empirically, results based on all U.S. manufacturers over a recent nine-year period may provide a benchmark for management when designing global inventory strategy. In summary, this dissertation comprehensively investigates the impact of global supply chains on inventory performance and financial performance in the context of multinational firms and U.S. domestic manufacturers and hence is expected to enhance our understanding of global supply chain management theory and practices.Item Supply Chain Disruption Management: A Conceptual Framework and Theoretical Model(2008-11-06) Macdonald, John R; Corsi, Thomas M; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Severe supply chain disruptions have a great impact on the firm. They can cause loss of sales to customers and lead to changes in the design and strategy of the supply chain. This research works focuses on supply chain disruption management. It presents an overall conceptual framework and a theoretical model, highlighting the decision making process of disruption recovery. First, the literature concepts surrounding supply chain disruptions - risk management, mitigation, crisis management, supply chain resilience, supply chain security, business continuity planning, and sustainability - are defined and differentiated, since these concepts often have overlapping factors that can cause confusion. After defining each of these concepts and the latest research findings, a framework for understanding the relationships among the concepts is developed. Second, this framework reveals a gap in the literature surrounding the disruption recovery and decision making process. While an initial disruption management model can be built using factors from the literature, data are collected by conducting multiple interviews and analyzed using a structured grounded theory methodology to produce a more complete model. This also has the effect of building theory from which propositions are developed surrounding discovery of the disruption, recovery team composition, decision making, and others. These propositions can be tested empirically in future research.Item Firm Decision Making Under Financial Distress: A Study of U.S. Air Fares and an Analysis of Inventories in U.S. Manufacturing Industries(2007-07-09) Hofer, Christian; Dresner, Martin E; Windle, Robert J; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates the effects of firm financial distress on two key firm decision variables: sales prices and inventories. These analyses contribute to the Structure-Conduct-Performance paradigm literature. Specifically, the feedback loop between financial distress, a result of poor past performance, and two firm conduct parameters, prices and inventories, is explored in great detail. The first essay is motivated by the ambiguity of prior research on the relationship between firm financial distress and prices. The extant economics, corporate finance and strategic management literatures differentially approach this relationship, and empirical research has found only limited, at times ambiguous support for any single theoretical contention. These theoretical perspectives are reviewed and an attempt is made to reconcile the apparent conflict by adopting a strategic contingency perspective that identifies in which way and in what instances firm financial distress may impact prices. The model is empirically tested using data from the U.S. airline industry. The results indicate that firm financial distress and prices are generally negatively related. Moreover, this effect is substantially stronger for firms operating under Chapter 11 protection than for firms approaching bankruptcy. It is further shown that the magnitude of the effect of financial distress on prices depends on firm factors such as operating costs, market power, and firm size, as well as on competitive characteristics such as market concentration and the financial condition of competitors. The second essay analyzes the impact of firm distress on firm inventories and investigates if this relationship is impacted by a firm's power relative to its upstream and downstream supply chain partners. Building on prior work in the economics field, this research is not only based on microeconomics theory, but also draws on inventory theory as well as on prior work on supply chain relationships. A comprehensive inventory estimation model is specified, and novel measures of inventory determinants and power are developed. The hypotheses are tested using panel data from the U.S. manufacturing industry. It is shown that distressed firms hold less inventory and that a firm's power within the supply chain will determine to what extent inventory ownership is reduced during times of financial distress. Implications for supplier selection and supply chain cooperation are discussed. In summary, this research significantly enhances researchers' understanding of why, how, and when firm financial distress affects prices and inventories.Item Supply Chain Strategy and the Benefits of Information Exchange(2007-06-25) Porterfield, Tobin Edward; Evers, Philip T; Bailey, Joseph P; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates the use of information exchange in industrial supply chain relationships. Specific information exchange characteristics are analyzed to determine their contribution to firm performance from the perspective of both the technology champion firm and the trading partner firm. Longitudinal analyses are conducted using data gathered from an electronically mediated industrial exchange network. This unique dataset, which includes information exchange data for thirty-nine technology champion firms and their electronically integrated trading partners across a two-year observation period, provides distinct insights into the application and outcomes related to information exchange in contemporary supply chains. The analysis of this large volume of information exchange transactions identifies best practices in the use of information exchange and their impact on firm performance.Item Strategic Behaviors and Market Outcomes: Two Essays(2007-04-19) Zou, Li; Dresner, Martin E; Windle, Robert J; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is comprised of two essays related, broadly, to themes of competitive dynamics and economic consequences. In Essay One, "Many Fields of Battle: How Cost Structure Affects Competition across Multiple Markets," a conjectural variation model is developed to examine what role cost structure and product differentiation play in affecting the mutual forbearance outcome arising from multi-market contact. The analytical results show that the degree of collusion (as measured by the price level) enhanced through multimarket contact is greater when multimarket contact occurs between firms with similar production costs and undifferentiated products. This hypothesis is then tested using data from the U.S. airline industry. The empirical results provide support for the view suggesting that multimarket contact blunts the edge of competition between firms. Moreover, it is found that rival carriers with similar production costs are more likely to experience such collusion facilitating effects from multimarket contact than those with dissimilar production costs. The second essay in this dissertation is entitled, "A Two-Location Inventory Model with Transshipments in a Competitive Environment." In this study, an analytical model is developed to assess the impact of transshipments on inventory replenishment decisions and the implications for firm profitability in a competitive, uncertain market environment. To incorporate the competition between stocking locations, the analytical model developed in this paper uses a marketing variable, customer's switching rate, to measure the probability of an individual consumer choosing an alternative source of supply in the event of stockout. In such an environment, firms not only cooperate through the practice of transshipments but also compete for business. A number of interesting conclusions are drawn from numerical optimization results. For instance, it is found that when firms differ in market demand, small firms benefit more from transshipments than do large firms. In addition, it is shown that there is an inverted u-shaped relationship between transshipment price and the profit improvements that large firms gain through transshipments, whereas such benefits are monotonically decreasing with transshipment price for small firms. These findings provide several managerial implications with regard to the role of transshipment price in creating benefits for participating firms.Item Determinants of customer partnering behavior in logistics outsourcing relationships: a relationship marketing perspective(2007-04-24) Rossiter Hofer, Adriana; Dresner, Martin E; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Developing close relationships with third-party logistics providers (3PLs) has been acknowledged in the literature as a beneficial strategy for 3PLs and customer firms. It has been shown that customers embedded in close relationships with 3PLs achieve higher levels of operational and financial performance. 3PLs also benefit from engaging in these relationships by generating higher levels of customer satisfaction, customer retention, and referrals to new customers. In order to complement these findings, this study integrates theories and empirical evidence drawn primarily from relationship marketing to develop a model of the antecedents of customer partnering behavior in logistics outsourcing relationships. It is proposed that a combination of key interorganizational conditions and customer characteristics directly impacts a customer's partnering behavior with a 3PL. More specifically, a customer embedded in a relationship with a 3PL in which there are high levels of dependence, trust, and satisfaction, is more likely to exhibit higher levels of partnering behavior with a 3PL. In addition, a customer's prior experiences with partnering, and policy of engaging in interactive relationships with customers, will also positively impact its partnering behavior with a 3PL. Antecedents of dependence and trust are also identified in the model. Data are collected through a web-based survey with customers of a large Brazilian 3PL and the model tested using structural equation modeling. The results support several of the hypotheses proposed in the model. In particular, evidence is found that customer-specific characteristics, such as a customer relationship marketing orientation and prior experience with 3PL partnering, have a positive effect on a customer partnering behavior with a 3PL, above and beyond the effect of interorganizational conditions, as advocated in traditional behavioral models. Contributions of this research include the depiction of the interplay between environmental forces, interorganizational conditions, and firm-specific factors that are hypothesized to impact a customer's partnering behavior with its 3PL. With an understanding of the mechanisms on which a customer's partnering behavior is built, 3PLs can take effective action in the pursuit of the development of closer relationships with their customers, contributing to the maintenance and expansion of their customer base.Item Joint Replenishment and Supply Chain Actions in the Retail Grocery Industry: Two Essays(2006-09-15) Donovan, Pamela S.; Grimm, Curtis; Evers, Philip T.; Logistics, Business and Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study investigated supply chain management practices in the retail grocery industry from two perspectives. First, the operational performance objectives were examined by developing and testing a periodic review, joint replenishment model and heuristic. Joint replenishment policies, designed to coordinate the ordering of multiple items, can reduce inventory costs by synchronizing transportation and replenishment decisions (Cetinkaya and Lee, 2000). A fully specified model was developed taking into account the cost disadvantage of over-declared shipments. Based on the performance of the Full model, a Truck heuristic was proposed to fill a truck with each order. By varying the model parameters, the study demonstrated the large impact transportation costs had on total inventory costs and the viability of the Truck heuristic, even for moderate differences in transportation rates. A simulation study tested violations of the demand normality assumption and found the Full model suboptimized the order interval and base stock levels under non-normal demand conditions. The result was a 2 percent cost increase over the expected costs in the Full model. The primary cost drivers were positive or negative deviations from truckload shipments and higher than expected demand during the order interval and replenishment period. The second essay examined the strategic objectives of the retail grocer using the Schumpeterian perspective to relate supply chain actions, market-based actions, and firm performance in a longitudinal study. A structured content method was used to code articles reporting on supply chain and market-based activities. The study found that higher levels of supply chain and market-based actions, a source of competitive advantage, resulted in higher sales growth. Unexpectedly, firms engaged in a broad range of supply chain activities realized a decline in sales, suggesting that a more narrow focus on specific supply chain programs provided greater financial benefits to firms in the retail grocery industry. An exploratory study using cluster analysis found grocery retailers used a variety of strategies. Larger firms were more likely to focus on market-based strategies and realized the largest sales growth. Smaller firms, on the other hand, tended to choose balanced or supply chain-focused strategies, while still realizing average sales growth.Item RISK MITIGATION IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN: EXAMINING THE ROLE OF IT INVESTMENT TO MANAGE SAFETY PERFORMANCE(2006-06-23) Cantor, David E.; Corsi, Thomas M.; Grimm, Curtis M.; Logistics, Business and Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Safety management in the supply chain is an interesting topic. The existence of unexpected supply chain events makes supply chain decision making difficult. To improve their response to unexpected events such as natural disasters or workplace accidents, managers are beginning to examine the link between information technology (IT) and safety in the supply chain. This dissertation examines the IT and safety link in three main ways. First, in the chapter entitled, "IT Investment and Safety: An Examination of The Impact of Information Technology on Safety Performance in a High Reliability Organization," drawing upon the work of Bharadwaj (2000), a theoretical model that links a firm's investment in IT resources to safety is developed. This model is empirically tested. A key finding is that physical IT resources, human IT resources, and growth in IT resources do contribute to safety performance. The second way that the IT and safety link is examined is through a U.S. Department of Transportation sponsored survey. In the chapter entitled, "Technology Adoption Patterns in the U.S. Motor Carrier Industry," a national survey is conducted to examine the safety technology adoption practices of larger trucking firms. The survey consists of twenty-six leading-edge safety technologies. A key finding is that larger trucking firms and firms that travel long distances are leaders in IT investment. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm (RBV), the third way that the IT and safety link is examined is in the chapter entitled "Driving for Safety: An Examination of Safety Technology Adoption and Firm Safety Performance in the U.S. Motor Carrier Industry." The RBV framework describes how a firm's internal resources may be used to improve firm performance. Based on an over 50% survey response rate, a key finding is that safety technology resources do contribute to safety performance. It is also discovered that if the firm's top management team is knowledgeable about safety technology practices, the effect of safety technology resources on safety performance increases. Similarly, if the firm's IT staff has technology project management skills, the effect of safety technology resources on safety performance increases.Item The Influence of National Culture on Buyer-Supplier trust and Commitment(2005-12-02) Morris, Matthew; Corsi, Thomas M.; Logistics, Business and Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Morgan and Hunt's (1994) Key Mediating Variable (KMV) Model has been demonstrated to be a useful means of exploring relationships between organizations. The model includes such key relational constructs as trust, commitment, cooperation, communication, shared values, and uncertainty, which have been studied extensively in the extant supply chain and marketing literatures. However, at present no comprehensive test of buyer-supplier relationships has used the KMV Model as the basis for analysis. In addition, no multi-industry study has applied the KMV Model to investigate its usefulness in other industries. Finally, the applications of the KMV Model thus far have not included testing for its usefulness across national boundaries. The present study addresses all three of the gaps above. Using responses from U.S.-based purchasing professionals, the current study replicates the KMV Model within a new population and addresses the three gaps: First, by investigating the buyer-supplier relationship; second, by sampling respondents from three industries (fabricated metal products; industrial machinery and equipment; and electronic and other electric equipment); and third, by collecting a sample with an internationally diverse supply base. The findings suggest that the KMV Model remains valid for predicting levels of trust and commitment in buyer-supplier relationships across the three industries. In addition, the analyses suggest that the KMV Model is a reliable predictor for trust and commitment, as well as for their respective sources and outcomes, in differing cultures at the national level.Item DRIVERS OF ORGANIZATIONAL MODULARITY IN SUPPLY CHAINS - A CROSS SECTIONAL STUDY OF U.S. MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES(2005-12-07) Cheng, Liang-Chieh; Grimm, Curtis M.; Dresner, Martin E.; Logistics, Business and Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates the driving forces behind the emerging phenomenon of "organizational modularity", by which firms create "virtual" organizations through outsourcing functions, by using contract manufacturers, by forming alliances, and by using temporary employment contracts, as they organize their activities within supply chains. Using transaction cost analysis as the overarching theoretical framework for the analysis, a number of hypotheses that relate industry structure to modularity are developed. A large scale industry-level data set is used to test the hypotheses. Statistical results show that heterogeneity of supply sources, and scale economies in focal and downstream industries, are positively associated with greater use of modular forms, whereas other factors, such as the concentration of upstream and downstream industries, are associated with less modularity. In the current outsourcing environment, these findings provide crucial insights to capture the dynamics of the prevalent modular networks.