Antecedents to supplier integration in the automotive industry: A multiple-case study of foreign subsidiaries in China

Supplier integration has become an important concept for improving supply chain performance. The aim of this paper is to identify factors that facilitate and inhibit supplier integration in the context of the Chinese automotive industry. An inductive approach based on grounded theory was chosen as the research methodology, where data was collected through 30 detailed case interviews with subsidiaries of foreign automotive companies operating in China. The results indicate that buyer-side leadership is an important antecedent for building motivation, trust, and commitment among suppliers and for shaping their mindsets. This, in turn, facilitates strategic alignment and enables suppliers to build collaborative capabilities, which are finally shown to be a key enabler for successful supplier integration.     

Questioning the relevance of supplier satisfaction for preferred customer treatment: Antecedent effects of comparative alternatives and multi-dimensionality

Through the construct of supplier satisfaction, recent research explains the supplier's preferred treatment of a given customer. This cause-and-effect phenomenon is often not contrasted with other reasons or controlled for. This work addresses this issue and uses two tactics to elaborate upon social exchange theory, namely, construct splitting and construct contrasting, to analyse the development of preferential customer treatment. For this purpose, a structural equation model is used with data from the international automotive industry. The results extend the breadth of constructs explaining preferred customer treatment (PCT) and challenge the existing reasoning by questioning the relative importance of supplier satisfaction. While supplier satisfaction does affect PCT, the relative supplier satisfaction defined as a comparison of outcomes between the actual and the best alternative business relationships influences PCT much more.Furthermore, by distinguishing between the economic and non-economic dimensions of supplier satisfaction, the study indicate that economic satisfaction has a higher influence on the relative satisfaction whereas social satisfaction a higher one on absolute supplier satisfaction.These findings imply that despite the current debate about the importance of behavioural constructs such as supplier interaction and social capital, supplier resource allocation decisions are actually dominated by economic and relative aspects of satisfaction. This outcome calls for a more economically driven debate about behavioural supply management approaches.     

信息技术与体育课程整合教学模式的探讨

文章主要介绍了信息技术与课程整合的基本理论,通过实例分析,阐述了"整合"理论在高校体育教学中的作用,对信息技术与体育课程的整合教学提出了创新性探讨。     

Implementing supply chain information integration in China: The role of institutional forces and trust

This study investigates the effects of Chinese companies’ institutional environment on the development of trust and information integration between buyers and suppliers. Three aspects of China's institutional environment are salient: legal protection, government support, and the importance of guanxi (interpersonal relationships). This study uses structural equation modeling to analyze data collected from 398 Chinese manufacturing companies. Government support and importance of guanxi significantly affect trust, which subsequently influences two elements of information integration, namely, information sharing and collaborative planning. Furthermore, the importance of guanxi has a direct, positive impact on information sharing, and government support has a direct, positive effect on both information sharing and collaborative planning.     

Quality management practices and their relationship to buyer’s supplier ratings: a study in the Korean automotive industry

This research explores if quality management practices are different among suppliers whose performance is rated high, medium, or low by a common buying company and identifies which specific practices contribute to the differences. The entire population of first-tier suppliers to a Korean auto assembler was surveyed to measure use of quality management practices. Useable returns were received from 25% of the suppliers surveyed. To measure conformance quality and overall rating, suppliers were categorized into high, medium, and low performing groups based on the buying company’s data. Multivariate analysis of variance was done using general linear model (GLM-MANOVA) to explore differences in the high-, medium-, and low-performing supplier groups based on their use of quality management practices. No statistically significant differences were found when suppliers were categorized based on conformance quality. However, when categorized based on overall rating, the highest rated suppliers were found to emphasize process management and employee satisfaction to a greater degree than the lowest rated suppliers.     

北京文化科技融合发展状况分析及对策建议

为推动文化与科技融合发展,北京市从政策保障、模式探索、平台建设和金融支撑等层面展开探索。本文分析了北京市文化和科技融合的现状及问题,从体制改革、市场机制完善、知识产权保护和人才建设四个层面提出了对策建议。     

Internal green integration and environmental performance: The predictive power of proactive environmental strategy,greening the supplier,and environmental collaboration with the supplier

The effect of proactive environmental strategies (PES) on corporate performance has been debated extensively among academics; however, the significance of the pathway of those strategies—internal green integration (IGI) through greening the supplier (GTS) and environmental collaboration with suppliers (ECS)—remains undecided. This study examines environmental performance (EP) through GTS, IGI, and ECS. It also examines the direct link between PES and IGI. A conceptual framework was designed following a rigorous review of the literature. A survey questionnaire was used to collect cross-sectional data from a random sample of manufacturing firms, obtaining 196 usable samples. Using AMOS, the structural equal modeling found a positive and significant impact of PES on IGI. Significant predictors of EP were GTS, IGI, and ECS. The findings of the study can provide managers with guidelines for dealing with business and environmental concerns. They can also contribute to creating strategies for environmental protection and management and reducing adverse effects on the environment. Finally, by examining the direct links between GTS, ECS, and EP, particularly in a developing context, the study may contribute to the literature of environmental policy.     

Market integration between conventional and Islamic stock prices

The paper assesses the market integration between conventional and Islamic stock prices from the long- and short-run perspectives for France, Indonesia, the UK and the US from September 8, 2008 to September 6, 2013 using various econometric approaches. The results show long-run relationships for all countries, except for the UK where there is no cointegration between conventional and Islamic stock prices. These findings suggest that the Islamic finance industry in the considered economies (except the UK) does not seem to be compliant to Islamic law's maxims, which hinders portfolio managers and market participants to benefit from the opportunities of international diversification and hedging effectiveness. From the correlation perspective, there is evidence of weak linkages between the Indonesian market and the developed markets for both conventional and Islamic stock prices, thus suggesting that investors can diversify their portfolios at the international level to minimize risk. However, there is high connection between the developed markets for both conventional and Islamic indexes. In addition, for each economy, the Islamic index is found to be strongly linked with its conventional counterpart. The structural change analysis reveals common break dates for several cross correlations, thus reflecting the similar time-paths of the interactions between markets. The presence of breaks in the inter-market linkages has important implications for international investors as regards portfolio diversification benefits and for financial policy makers regarding contagion risks and market policies.     

The contingency effects of environmental uncertainty on the relationship between supply chain integration and operational performance

This paper extends prior supply chain research by building and empirically testing a theoretical model of the contingency effects of environmental uncertainty (EU) on the relationships between three dimensions of supply chain integration and four dimensions of operational performance. Based on the contingency and organizational information processing theories, we argue that under a high EU, the associations between supplier/customer integration, and delivery and flexibility performance, and those between internal integration, and product quality and production cost, will be strengthened. These theoretical propositions are largely confirmed by multi-group and structural path analyses of survey responses collected from 151 of Thailand's automotive manufacturing plants. This paper contributes to operations management contingency research and provides theory-driven and empirically proven explanations for managers to differentiate the effects of internal and external integration efforts under different environmental conditions.     

The effects of internal versus external integration practices on time-based performance and overall firm performance

This paper examines the effects of integration practices on time-based performance and on overall firm performance (financial and market share). Integration practices are grouped into two categories: (1) external strategic design integration, which reaches across firm boundaries to involve suppliers and customers and (2) internal design-process integration, which comprises more tactically oriented, integration practices that match design requirements and process capabilities. First, regression results show that both internal and external integration are related to time-based performance, which in turn is related to firm performance. Thus, two indirect routes to firm performance are identified. Second, hierarchical regression reveals that integration directly affects firm performance even after time-based performance is accounted for. Finally, we found that the interaction of internal and external integration is significantly related to both market share and financial performance (after controlling for all other effects). This latter result suggests that the joint use of external and internal integration practices has a synergistic effect on firm performance.     

上海城乡一体化发展的问题、关系与路径分析

本文认为,在上海城乡一体化进程中,我们要处理好市中心人口郊外迁移的问题、处理好农村土地顺利流转问题、加快郊区的基础设施建设以及降低通勤费用,学习西方以及国内其他城市的经验,以农民为建设的主体,进行各方面机制以及体制的创新,优化上海中心城市以及郊区的产业空间布局,按照“1966”大力发展新城、新市镇以及重点村.     

The impact of power and relationship commitment on the integration between manufacturers and customers in a supply chain

Supply chain integration (SCI) has received increasing attention from scholars and practitioners in recent years. However, our knowledge of what influences SCI is still very limited. Although marketing and management researchers have investigated power and relationship commitment issues between organizations, few have examined their impact on SCI. This paper extends the power–relationship commitment theory established in Western marketing literature and links it with SCI in China, through examining the relationship between power, relationship commitment and the integration between manufacturers and their customers. We propose and empirically test a model using data collected from 617 manufacturing companies in China. The results show that different types of customer power impact manufacturers’ relationship commitment in different ways. Expert power, referent power and reward power are important in improving manufacturers’ normative relationship commitment, while reward power and coercive power enhance instrumental relationship commitment. We also found that normative relationship commitment had a greater impact on customer integration than instrumental relationship commitment. These findings are interpreted in light of national culture differences between China and the U.S. in terms of power distance and collectivism, which provide a new perspective on SCI.     

The influence of the competitive landscape on cross-functional interactions between procurement and engineering

This study assesses the extent to which a firm's external environment shapes the cross-functional interactions between procurement and engineering, utilizing an embedded multiple-case study methodology. In summary, we found that high environmental ambiguity discourages procurement-engineering mutual understanding. High environmental uncertainty with moderate ambiguity, on the other hand, appears to foster both mutual understanding and inter-functional collaboration. Overall, procurement personnel are more optimistic than engineering personnel regarding the performance results stemming from cross-functional integration. Additionally, increasing job tenure for procurement personnel leads to a higher level of perceived integration with engineering, while engineers with longer job tenure report see less value in collaborating with procurement, often creating an asymmetric power distribution with engineering taking a dominating role.     

服务导向与组织内外部营销表现关系之研究

在服务营销管理的领域中，内部营销及外部营销均为影响组织绩效的关键因素，本研究以餐饮业的服务员工及顾客为实证研究的对象，将服务导向作为主要变量，从员工及顾客的角度，发展一个整合服务导向及组织内、外部营销表现的模型，并以LISREL分析验证本研究所提出的假设。     

The health issues of the homeless and the homeless issues of the ill-health

In public policy planning and budgeting, the health issues and homeless issues tend to be interrelated and reinforced by each other, but this mutual causality is usually ignored in the existing literature. This paper provides an unbiased estimate of a structural equation model taking endogeneity into account. A questionnaire is designed based on the health-related quality of life (EQ-5D) framework and is given to 322 homeless individuals. Evidence shows that, without timely support, the homeless state and health state will fast deteriorate and reinforce each other. It is therefore arguable to broaden the definition of statutory homelessness, and the “preventative approach” can save, rather than increase, the public resources spent on the homeless.     

On the long-run relationship between inflation and output in a spatial overlapping generations model

The paper builds a model that features spatial differentiation of markets, and then uses it to study, first, the relationship between inflation and the steady-state level of output, and second, the relationship between inflation and the steady-state distribution of output across the economy. A steady-state of the model entails a stationary distribution of money across the locations of the economy. With all else held fixed, a change in the rate of money-growth induces a change in the distribution of money, which leads to a change in labour supply and production throughout the economy. Thus the distribution of money provides a channel through which a change in monetary policy affects real economic activity.     

Contextual factors affecting the integration of enterprise systems in post-merger oil and gas companies

This study examines the contextual factors of the external business environment, organization, information systems, and enterprise system software as they affect integration of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems after a merger or acquisition in the oil and gas industry. A multiple case study method using primary and secondary data revealed: ERPs are operational necessities rather than strategic differentiators; best practice adoption is a viable alternative that supports successful integration of cultures and knowledge from two experienced organizations; schedules are extended when best practices from both companies are consolidated into a single instance; consolidation facilitates Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and lowers the cost of ownership; imposing acquirer systems on targets facilitates timely decision-making and shorter schedules.     

谈投标活动应规避的风险和陷阱

《中华人民共和国招标投标法》的颁布实施,使我国的招标、投标活动更加科学化、规范化、法制化。但是,由于招标、投标活动属于经济领域范畴,自身存在许多风险和陷阱。对于如何科学合理地规避这些风险和陷阱,文章提出了看法。     

城市增长与地球环境的关系

为维持地球健康,减少城市对地球环境的影响,以城市有机体的代谢为分析起点,首先从地球系统科学的视角分析城市增长与有限的地球环境资源的矛盾冲突,进而探讨城市无限增长的一种政治经济根源,在此基础上,思考探索城市环境可持续运行的可能途径.