Constantin Blome

• Lancaster University

The significance of the supply chain finance (SCF) ecosystem has been acknowledged by both scholars and practitioners, with platforms playing a pivotal role in its development. However, the platform-centric SCF ecosystem formation process remains ambiguous. Adopting an inter-organizational network perspective, this study investigates how third-part...

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to discuss how the mastery of resilience in operations and supply chains plays a significant role in the transition to a more sustainable future. Furthermore, it is supposed to propose avenues for future research on operational and supply chain resilience, interacting with the sustainability literature in our...

Previous literature provides ample analyses of the antecedents of supply chain agility, but the organizational context has generally been neglected. Setting up the right organizational context is important for dynamic capabilities such as supply chain agility, especially in turbulent times. In this research, we study organizational context from two...

Competencies such as product stewardship and pollution prevention are essential for a firm's pursuit of environmental sustainability. Yet, not all firms willingly develop these competencies. Among others, firms that have a strong entrepreneurial orientation are better placed to adopt product stewardship and pollution prevention. Additionally, the i...

Purpose – This study focuses on (re-)introducing computer simulation as a part of the research paradigm. Simulation is a widely applied research method in supply chain and operations management. However, leading journals, such as the International Journal of Operations and Production Management, have often been reluctant to accept simulation studie...

This paper systematically reviews the literature on the impact of geopolitical disruptions on supply chains to identify primary discourses, emergent themes and key gaps to set a future research agenda. The guiding research question is 'how do geopolitical disruptions affect the configuration, flow, and management of global supply chains?'. The stud...

The purpose of this systematic review is to synthesise the body of knowledge related to sustainable humanitarian supply chains across disaster relief as well as those of logistics of development aid. The output of this paper is a set of research propositions that will help advance theory building and validation for the management of sustainable hum...

Purpose The view that supply chain learning (SCL) has become a fundamental capability that supply chains must employ to innovate and improve their financial, technological, operational, environmental and social performance is widely accepted. However, the SCL phenomenon is still understudied and not fully understood by scholars, decision-makers and...

Tens of millions of people worldwide-at a minimum-are victims of modern slavery (MS), including various forms of human trafficking, forced labor, and child labor. In the current digitization era, digital technology may be used to recruit or control MS victims, but it also has the potential to mitigate MS risks in supply chains. However, although sc...

The COVID lockdowns were characterised by new forms of governmentality as lives were disrupted and controlled through the vertical transmission of biopolitics by the state. The paper considers how this was experienced by academics in 11 different countries through analysis of diaries written during the first lockdown. The paper asks if communities...

Purpose That knowledge acquisition from external sources can play a pivotal role in product design is a well-known fact. However, knowledge acquisition need not play a pivotal role in every context; it is also documented to have a dark side (i.e. negative impacts). Specifically, given that product stewardship, by definition, calls on each party in...

While trust and opportunism were traditionally considered as the opposite ends of a continuum, when considered through the lens of paradox theory, these two could not only coexist, but also have a complementary effect on the achievement of sustainability in buyer-supplier relationships. To examine the combined effects of trust and opportunism, we a...

Financial inclusion is a vital development priority for countries worldwide. Mobile wallet (m-wallet) is considered as a disruptive payment method that will substitute the traditional physical wallet to achieve the so-called cashless society and enables financial inclusion. This study aims at developing and testing a research model that integrates...

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to discuss the theme of managing operations and supply chains in the so-called ‘new normal’. It reflects the themes emerging from recent research and how these might be conceptualised. Design/methodology/approach – The article reviews research presented at the EurOMA 2021 conference and eight papers subseque...

Modern slavery and conflict minerals are often treated as two separate grand challenges governed by different legislation, yet conflict mineral settings commonly involve and inflict slavery in supply chains-hence these two wicked problems are deeply interconnected. This paper focuses on due diligence in the context of conflict mineral supply chains...

With the increasing frequency and impact of disruptions (i.e., in the wake of COVID 19, Suez Canal blockage), researchers and practitioners are faced with an ongoing challenge to enable supply chain resilience. Drawing on the theory of paradox and ambidexterity, this study highlights paradoxes in enabling supply chain resilience and proposes that f...

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted global supply chains and exposed weak links in the chains far beyond what most people have witnessed in their living memory. The scale of disruption affects every nation and industry, and the sudden and dramatic changes in demand and supply that have occurred during the pandemic crisis clearly differentiate its i...

Based on 100 environmental violations occurring in China in 2018 and matched supply chain relationship data obtained from Bloomberg, our research shows that environmental violations have negative financial impacts on not only the violators but also their supply chain partners including customers and suppliers. Nevertheless, environmental transparen...

Financial inclusion is a vital development priority for countries worldwide. Mobile wallet (m-wallet) is considered as a disruptive payment method that will substitute the traditional physical wallet to achieve the so-called cashless society and enables financial inclusion. This study aims at developing and testing a research model that integrates...

Purpose The purpose of this article is to discuss the role of operations management in society. The article detects trends, raises critical questions to operations management research and articulates a research agenda to increase the value of such research in addressing societal problems. Design/methodology/approach This paper evaluates the papers...

PURPOSE: This study conceptualizes supply market orientation (SMO) for the purchasing and supply chain management function and discusses how SMO capabilities are developed and how their application differs within and across firms. Our research can thus be used as a blueprint for the development of a SMO capability that accommodates a firm’s unique...

As information technology (IT) success is both essential and elusive, researchers and practitioners are faced with an ongoing challenge to determine what IT capabilities should be developed to ensure IT success. Drawing on the paradox and ambidexterity theory, we highlight paradoxes in IT success and propose that firms manage these paradoxes by dev...

Purpose Does internal integration extend to business continuity and to managing supply chain disruptions (SCDs)? Despite the voluminous literature on supply chain integration, evidence on its effectiveness on risk management and disruption response is scant. The purpose of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of business continuity management...

This study explores the impact of supply chain collaboration on eco-innovations in the context of 220 Chinese manufacturing supplier firms involved in global supply chain networks. It investigates how supplier and customer collaborations help firms to enhance product eco-innovations, and/or process eco-innovations, and how the institutional context...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to test entrepreneurial and learning orientations as the antecedents of Dynamic Supply Chain Capabilities (DSCCs). Design: The paper tests a hypothetical model using structural equation modelling as a statistical analysis technique, based on data gathered from a survey of 275 operations managers in Pakistan’s...

Coordination among actors in a humanitarian relief supply chain decides whether a relief operation can be or successful or not. In humanitarian supply chains, due to the urgency and importance of the situation combined with scarce resources, actors have to coordinate and trust each other in order to achieve joint goals. This paper investigated empi...

Purpose - This article develops a taxonomy of sourcing decision-making (SDM) archetypes and explores how different contextual factors influence these archetypes when global sourcing of complex components is considered a viable option. Design/methodology/approach - A multiple case study approach with five in-depth cases is employed. In total, 19 i...

The scarcity of IT resources and technological advancements in high-tech small and medium enterprises (SMEs) require leaders to embed IT ambidexterity-simultaneous pursuit of IT exploitation and IT exploration activities-into their organization's strategy, which could be challenging. To better understand how leaders enable IT ambidexterity, this st...

Purpose-This paper aims to set out the development, based on the extant literature, an integrated conceptual framework for the emergent field of sustainable global sourcing (GS) that synthesizes its antecedents, GS practices and sustainable performance. Design/methodology/approach-Conceptual theory building combined with content analysis is used to...

Purpose This paper aims to set out the development, based on the extant literature, an integrated conceptual framework for the emergent field of sustainable global sourcing (GS) that synthesizes its antecedents, GS practices and sustainable performance. Design/methodology/approach Conceptual theory building combined with content analysis is used t...

New product development (NPD) speed is becoming an important weapon by which firms can gain market share in today's competitive and complex market environments, where consumer preferences change rapidly. Drawing on the information technology (IT)‐enabled organizational capabilities perspective, this study proposes that IT ambidexterity—the simultan...

Studying near-miss events – occasions when a company comes close to being negatively impacted – can help identify systemic issues and thereby enhance organizational resilience. However, what is not known is how firms learn from near-miss events, and how their learning is translated into response strategies in the face of supply chain disruptions. I...

Based on a systematic review of SCF literature and the information processing theory, this paper builds an integrated conceptual framework to illustrate how SCF providers deal with uncertainties, develop capabilities and further achieve whole financial supply chain (SC) integration. It shows that uncertainties faced by SCF providers (including SCF...

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is one of the world’s largest infrastructure projects, with its potential political and economic impact being widely discussed since its inception in 2013. Yet the phenomenon has received only limited attention in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) literature. In response, we first conduct a broad systematic re...

The competitive advantage purchasing provides has been debated for decades. For a novel perspective we derive a theoretical framework grounded in the knowledge-based view in order to examine how purchasing knowledge and purchasing integration impact cost and strategic performance. The derived hypotheses are tested based on extensive secondary data...

The purpose of this paper is to determine how organisations can connect internal and external processes to enable an agile response to continuous change. Drawing on life cycle theory, a hypothetical model is developed regarding the independent and combinative effects of internal and external process connectivity on supply chain agility. The researc...

Abstract The importance of big data and predictive analytics has been at the forefront of research for operations and manufacturing management. Literature has reported the influence of big data and predictive analytics for improved supply chain and operational performance, but there has been a paucity of literature regarding the role of external in...

This paper extends operations strategy theory on efficiency and flexibility trade-offs to the emergent phenomenon of redistributed manufacturing (RDM). The study adopts a multiple-case design including five small and five large pharmaceutical firms. We propose that organizations can gain the efficiency benefits of centralized manufacturing and the...

Purpose-This paper examines how supply chain integration capabilities inform green design strategy adoption and whether green design strategy can lead to higher levels of environmental and economic performance. Design/methodology/approach-A survey-based approach was used to empirically test the study hypotheses. Based on 216 usable responses coll...

Purpose: This paper positions market sensing, supply chain agility and supply chain adaptability as a coherent cluster of dynamic supply chain capabilities. The purpose of the paper is to understand how dynamic supply chain capabilities interrelate and their effect on supply chain ambidexterity. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a survey of P...

This study considers decision making beyond a dyadic buyer-supplier context to the network context. Decisions made by firms are shaped by behavioral norms within the supply network as perceived by the decision makers. Firms can perceive themselves to be part of a collaborative regime or one in which the potential for non-cooperation is high. Furthe...

As recently stakeholders complain about the use of conflict minerals in consumer products that are often invisible to them in final products, firms across industries implement conflict mineral management practices. Conflict minerals are those, whose systemic exploitation and trade contribute to human right violations in the country of extraction an...

Many researchers believe the tremendous industrial development over the past two centuries is unsustainable because it has led to unintended ecological deterioration. Despite the ever-growing attention sustainable supply-chain management (SSCM) has received, most SSCM research and models look at the consequences, rather than the antecedents or moti...

: In recent years, there has been a proliferation of interest in resilience in the supply chain field. Even though literature has acknowledged the antecedents of resilient supply chains, such as supply chain visibility, cooperation, and information sharing, their confluence in creating resilient supply chains where other behavioural issues are prev...

Purpose The environmental management of supply chains has become increasingly relevant in the recent era. Extant research proposes two main forms of mechanisms – collaboration and evaluation – for environmental supply chain management. Despite the wide use of these mechanisms and the empirical insight into the fact that they could be adopted simul...

Buying firms are increasingly confronted with compliance scandals in their upstream supply chain, for which they are held accountable by their stakeholders. Purely symbolic practices, typically referred to as greenwashing, as well as substantive practices, such as green supplier championing, are thus receiving widespread attention in business pract...

Abstract Purpose – To examine when and how organizations create agility, adaptability, and alignment as distinct supply chain properties to gain sustainable competitive advantage. Design/methodology/approach – The current study utilizes the resource-based view (RBV) under the moderating effect of top management commitment. To test our research hypo...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic review of the literature concerning the negative aspects of global sourcing (GS). It complements prior research on the positive aspects of GS, advances theoretical understanding of the phenomenon, and suggests an agenda for future research. Design/methodology/approach The sourcing, int...

Media increasingly accuse firms of exploiting suppliers, and these allegations often result in lurid headlines that threaten the reputations and therefore business successes of these firms. Neither has the phenomenon of supplier exploitation been investigated from a rigorous, ethical standpoint, nor have answers been provided regarding why some fir...

Buying firms must pay increased attention to supply chain sustainability issues, as stakeholders might hold them responsible for non-sustainable supply chain activities. Frequently, sustainability problems occur upstream at the sub-supplier level. Building on the literature on multi-tier supply chains (MSCs), we investigated the sustainability mana...

This research aims to advance theoretical understanding around the management of supply chain disruptions through a multi-stage Delphi study on supply chain resilience. Stage one focused on polling academic experts followed by a second stage with practitioners from automotive, electronics and food industries. We examine the types of disruptions tha...

Purpose Supply chains evolve and change in size, shape and configuration, and in how they are coordinated, controlled and managed. Some supply chains are mature and relatively unchanging. Some are subject to significant change. New supply chains may emerge and evolve for a variety of reasons. The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of su...

In light of the growing complexity of globally dispersed, multi-tier supply chains, the involvement of first-tier suppliers has become instrumental in the quest for achieving sustainability compliance along the supply chain. We describe this new responsibility as the double agency role. We employ agency and institutional theory arguments to explore...

G lobal sourcing (GS) is a firmly established phenomenon in modern business practice that requires specific expertise from different organizational functions, such as purchasing, production, logistics, and research and development to analyze and select sourcing alternatives effectively. In this context, global sourcing decision-making (GSDM) proces...

Even though research has suggested that supply chain agility and supply chain adaptability are distinct capabilities, little is known about their performance effects and about the contextual conditions under which they are effective. Based on a sample of 143 German firms, we empirically investigate the effects of supply chain agility and supply cha...

This study evaluates the effect of pre-existing relational governance mechanisms on environmental collaboration. Specifically, our study distinguishes between structural and process dimensions of relational governance mechanisms so as to facilitate a more nuanced investigation into the inherent complementarities and performance implications. Using...

Purpose ‐ There is only limited knowledge about the performance benefits of the alignment of sustainability-related upstream and downstream collaboration. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the deviation from an optimal profile of supply chain collaboration and its detrimental effect on sustainability performance as well as market performance....

Buying firms have to put increased attention on sustainability issues in supply chains, as they are hold responsible for any non-sustainable actions in their supply chains by stakeholders. Yet, firms have to explore how they can most effectively accomplish sustainability implementation beyond the boundaries of their own firm. The complexity of supp...

Ambidexterity has been gaining attention among supply chain scholars due to its potential for overcoming trade-offs. Associated with these complexities is the choice of an appropriate governance mechanism in buyer-supplier relationships, which can include contractual and relational approaches. Extending ambidexterity research to the supply chain ma...

The objective of this paper is to establish a theoretical foundation for financial supply chain management (FSCM) in order to strengthen managerial decisions concerning financial flows in supply chains. Although such decisions are made frequently and partial aspects of FSCM are already understood in business practice, empirical knowledge about FSCM...

Using a sample of multinational firms in Germany, we develop and empirically examine a model to test the effects of ethical climate and its antecedents on purchasing social responsibility (PSR). Our results show different effects of benevolence dimensions of ethical climate on PSR: employee-focused climate has no effect, but community-focused clima...

This study adopts the opposing theoretical views of legitimacy – institutional and strategic – in evaluating firm performance and top management commitment as antecedents to green procurement and green supplier development. Additionally, the impact of green procurement and green supplier development on supplier performance is analyzed. Using a samp...

Logistics’ contribution to corporate performance has increased over recent years, particularly due to supply chain innovations. Opposed to common innovations focusing on the improvement of product or information flow, supply chain finance (SCF) targets the financial flow and allows buying firms and their suppliers to improve working capital and red...

Since supplier insolvencies are a major source of supply chain disruptions, scholars have continuously suggested managing supply chain risk management (SCRM) proactively in order to avoid their occurrence. However, business practice seems to fail with this task. This paper investigates antecedents which foster proactive SCRM implementation from a c...

This paper investigates the fundamental building blocks of supply chain agility, which are conceptualized as supply- and demand-side competence. While the former is conceptualized as production and supply management related activities, the latter is conceptualized as distribution and demand management related activities. The model further assesses...

Supply chain flexibility has become an important ingredient to remain competitive in today’s increasingly complex business environment. Within this context, drawing from the knowledge-based view of the firm, we investigate the influence of internal and external knowledge transfer activities on supply chain flexibility. In addition, taking a conting...

It's not easy being green, but it does beg the question: Does being green pay off on the bottom line? Unfortunately, that question of becoming ISO 14001 to reap financial benefit remains widely unanswered. In particular, corporate practice is interested in how environmental management impacts firms’ finance through top-line impact, bottom-line impa...

Squeezing: Spart es Geld oder verursacht es Kosten? Die Kosten müssen runter! Immer noch und immer weiter. Der geschickte Einkäufer ringt seinen Lieferanten so viel Preisnachlass wie möglich ab. Ach ja? Kurzfristig mag dies so scheinen, doch langfristig ist das leider oft ein fataler Irrtum. Mehr und mehr Unternehmen erkennen, dass sie Lieferanten...

The increasing importance of sustainable behaviour in business has enhanced its impact on supply chain management. Firms foster sustainability in their supplier base in reaction to growing sustainability requirements in various ways, including sustainable supplier co-operation. Knowledge about the effects of sustainable supplier co-operation on fir...

Supply Chain Risk Management has become a key concern for organizations, which is even further emphasized by the current economic and financial crisis. Against this background, this paper investigates successful approaches and experiences by companies in dealing with this new reality, especially as it concerns the supply side. Using in-depth case s...

Supply risk management (SRM) is on the rise as firms face increased risks due to outsourcing and an increasingly dynamic and complex business environment. Besides, supply chain risks and resulting disruptions are not only related to temporarily enhanced cost, but may endanger the existence of a firm. Many firms from different industries intensified...

Varying definitions and interpretations of sustainability standards have become a major concern for purchasing and supply management (PSM). As the foremost interface to an increasingly global supply base, PSM plays an important role in the mitigation of sustainability-related risks. By conducting responsible purchasing and supplier management, the...

Organizations face increased pressure from stakeholders to incorporate a plethora of corporate responsibility (CR) and sustainability aspects in their business practices. Legal and extra-legal demands are dynamically changing; almost no organizational function is unaffected. Owing to the outsourcing wave of the last decade, in particular purchasing...

The general trend to focus more on core competencies and the ongoing shift of value creation to suppliers has caused the dependency of purchasing companies on their suppliers to grow (Ellram and Birou 1995; Boutellier and Corsten 2000). Together with this development, more and more cooperative relationships with suppliers have evolved, and as a con...