Christian Hofer

• University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

Appointing individuals drawn from suppliers and customers to a firm's board of directors is an increasingly popular practice that can enhance the interorganizational relationship and generate relational rents. Yet, such board members may act in the best interest of their primary employer rather than the shareholders of the firm whose board they ser...

While national culture has been recognized as an important driver of business decisions, our understanding of its effects on firm-level inventories is limited. In this paper, we argue that the national culture dimensions of uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation influence biases and behaviors that affect how managers make inventory decisio...

While greater competitive activity is generally associated with competitive advantage, certain competitive actions by a supplier may have spillover effects that adversely impact buying firms, leading them to reduce future purchases from the supplier. We study the effects of competitive actions in the context of vertical buyer–supplier relationships...

Numerous studies have examined the relationship between inventory management and financial performance. However, the focus of such empirical work has primarily been on how a firm's own inventory characteristics affect its performance. Our objective is to extend this body of literature beyond the firm‐level. We draw on inventory theory and resource‐...

Purpose This study aims to examine the extent to which a buying firm can leverage the firm's supplier's innovations to boost the firm's own innovation performance and key moderators to this relationship. Grounded in social embeddedness theory, the authors explore the role of dyadic embeddedness between a buyer and supplier as a facilitator of buyer...

In their pursuit of greater performance, firms invariably compete with their rivals for customer demand or scarce resources in factor markets. Firms’ competitive behavior—the series of competitive actions taken to create or maintain competitive advantage—thus, is a key predictor of profitability and has received much attention in the strategic mana...

We examine the extent to which suppliers assimilate to their customers' inventory leanness levels. Drawing on institutional theory, we hypothesize that there is a positive relationship between major customer and supplier inventory leanness and that this effect is moderated by compliant, reflexive, and normative isomorphic forces. Specifically, we c...

Stakeholders increasingly put pressure on firms to ensure their suppliers' adherence to corporate social responsibility principles and standards. A firm's supplier monitoring activities (SMA) are, thus, central to achieving supply chain transparency. In an effort to help build a business case for SMA, this research explores the effect of SMA disclo...

The diversification of service portfolios is one of the key strategies employed by third-party logistics providers (3PLs) to remain competitive. Moving from traditional transportation and warehousing services, many 3PLs now offer a one-stop shopping experience to shippers by combining these services with customized offerings such as inventory manag...

Stakeholders expect focal firms to improve their environmental performance. While firms may be able to accumulate the environmental expertise needed to achieve this goal internally, doing so may require significant time and resource commitments. Alternatively, buyer firms can leverage their suppliers’ existing environmental expertise and gain acces...

In this research, we examine how socio-economic mobility affects domestic passenger enplanement volumes at U.S. airports. In addition to metrics such as income and population levels, socio-economic mobility has been identified as an important characteristic of the socio-economic fabric of market areas. As such, it is a potentially significant deter...

Purpose Content analysis is a methodology that has been used in many academic disciplines as a means to extract quantitative measures from textual information. The purpose of this paper is to document the use of content analysis in the supply chain literature. We also discuss opportunities for future research. Design/methodology/approach We cond...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to build and test theory regarding how rivalry in environmental management (EM) affects a focal firm’s environmental image and financial performance. Design/methodology/approach The theory is tested with an original panel data set of 2,776 focal-rival dyad pairs. Measures of environmental signals are develope...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to: first, provide a systematic review of the drivers of retail on-shelf availability (OSA) that have been scrutinized in the literature; second, identify areas where further scrutiny is needed; and third, critically reflect on current conceptualizations of OSA and suggest alternative perspectives that may hel...

Gulf carriers, such as Emirates Airline, Etihad Airways, and Qatar Airways, have expanded aggressively and are creating an increasingly dense global network. These carriers’ future growth prospects, however, hinge on their ability to gain access to markets in Europe and America, for example. Existing bilateral agreements stifle the Gulf carriers’ a...

Building on the lean management literature, prior research in transportation economics and context provided by a series of interviews with top industry executives and investment analysts, this study examines the relationship between motor carriers’ asset leanness and financial performance. Based on the analysis of data from the US truckload motor c...

This paper adds to the empirical inventory management literature by examining the moderating effects of environmental dynamism on the relationship between inventory leanness and financial performance. While the financial implications of inventory management practices have been extensively studied in the literature, it is clear that lean inventory s...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to adopt and contribute to the further development of the relational view by examining the drivers of retailer-supplier collaboration and its effect on the performance of both the retailer and the supplier. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws its conclusions from a structural analysis of dyadic surv...

Previous research has used reduced-form models to determine the impact of financial condition and safety investment on airline accident risk and has found limited statistical evidence. We model safety investment as a mediating variable between the financial health of an airline and its accident propensity and simultaneously account for the reverse...

Existing literature suggests that the increasing concentration in the retail industry is allowing powerful retailers to exploit their weaker suppliers, which causes the suppliers' performance to suffer. This study takes a collaborative perspective of resource dependency theory and suggests that when suppliers engage in supply chain relationships wi...

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the relationship between lean production implementation and financial performance. Particular emphasis is placed on the mediating role of inventory leanness in deriving the financial performance benefits commonly associated with lean production. Moreover, the interaction among different lean p...

When there is only one airport in the origin and destination cities of a given route market, the assessment of level of competition in an airline route market can be straightforward. The presence of more than one airport at the origin or destination cities, however, makes the measurement of route competition much more difficult. This research measu...

When there is only one airport in the origin and destination cities of a given route market, the assessment of level of competition in an airline route market can be straightforward. The presence of more than one airport at the origin or destination cities, however, makes the measurement of route competition much more difficult. This research measu...

Environmental management (EM) issues have received substantial attention in operations management. While the link between EM practices and firm performance has been well studied, little is known about the competitive drivers of a firm's EM activities. In this research, a Schumpeterian economics perspective is adopted to investigate competitive inte...

An investigation is conducted on the effect of financial distress on customer service levels in the U.S. airline industry. Using data from the first quarter of 1998 to the third quarter of 2006, we employ a seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) model to analyze the impact of financial distress on three measures of customer service. We find that hig...

The effects of inventory management on firm performance have been well documented. Most previous research, however, has focused on the performance effects of total inventories and has ignored the potentially differential performance effects of raw materials, work-in-process, and finished goods inventories. This research investigates the effects of...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the current state of implementation of lean production practices in China as compared to the USA. Moreover, an institutional‐theoretic framework is developed that explores the interplay among economic, socio‐cultural and regulative forces that may shape the adoption process of lean production practices...

While firms increasingly adopt lean inventory practices, there is limited evidence that inventory leanness leads to improved firm performance. This study reexamines this relationship in an attempt to overcome some shortcomings of previous research. To that end, a theory-based measure of inventory leanness, which takes into account industry-specific...

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of current United States-European Union (U.S.-E.U.) aviation relations. Following a brief historical review, the proposed North-Atlantic Open Aviation Area is discussed. Specifically, the associated economic benefits are assessed, and the causes of the current deadlock in U.S.-E.U. negotiations are analy...

This study investigates how air traffic emissions taxes may impact carbon emissions in the US. The magnitude of emissions savings in the US domestic airline industry that would result from lower demand for air travel as taxes are levied and air fares increase is estimated. At the same time, the air-automobile substitution effect is considered and i...

This study investigates to what extent cross-product (belly cargo) output affects (passenger ticket) prices in the US domestic airline industry. The empirical analysis indicates that greater cargo volumes generally result in lower air fares, presumably as a result of the airlines' realization of economies of scope. This magnitude of this price effe...

This article investigates to what extent an airline’s financial distress impacts its pricing behavior. While prior research suggests that, on average, distressed airlines sell at lower fares, it is hypothesized that the magnitude of this effect may depend on certain firm and market specific contingencies. A large-scale empirical analysis using pane...

This study presents a time series examination of price premiums in the US airline industry. Price premiums are defined as price markups due to domination and concentration at the airport and route market levels. The differential effect of these price premium drivers is empirically investigated, and it is shown that the largest components of price p...

This paper examines the impact of firm financial distress and bankruptcy on an airline's pricing behaviour. Three theoretical rationales are set forth: the supply-side rationale suggests that the bankrupt firm's lower operating costs may result in lower prices; from a demand perspective, distressed firms' prices may be lowered in response to reduce...