Institutional Constraints, Managerial Choices, and Conflicts in Public Sector Supply Chains

ABSTRACT

In this research, we compare the governance mechanisms that public sector managers and private sector managers leverage when responding to conflict in supply chain relationships. We find evidence that public sector managers are more likely than private sector managers to rely on written (formal) contract mechanisms, but that both public and private managers use relational (informal) governance mechanisms to similar extents. We also find that managers from both sectors perceive an improvement to the quality of the exchange relationship when a relational approach is emphasized in managing the conflict. Our research provides an important contribution to our understanding about the actions public managers take in dealing with supply chain conflicts and suggests potential policy alternatives to foster contracting efficiency and effectiveness.

Notes

We will use the terms written and formal interchangeably, as well as relational and informal.

This variable is unbalanced in our data, with more than twice as many respondents from the private sector than from the public sector. A post-hoc power analysis of model (c) (as shown in Figure 1) indicates our power to be .803, suggesting that this imbalance is not a problem.

We also assessed the relational construct excluding the final question in Table 2 regarding the sake of the long-term relationship because this question could be interpreted differently across the sectors. The results were nearly identical either way, so we retained the question in our final relational construct to maintain consistency with the extant literature.

We also tested the models in a combined analysis using multiple analysis of covariance (MANCOVA), and as independent OLS models, and the results are substantively unchanged. We also considered alternative specifications of the outcome variables for Equations (1) and (2), including weighted averages and categorical responses with ordered logit models. Since the key findings were robust to all of these alternative specifications, we present the modeling approach that is most appropriate given the nature of our data.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adam Eckerd

Adam Eckerd ([email protected]) is an assistant professor with the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech. He conducts research on organizational and individual decision making, particularly as it relates to how risk is assessed and how information is used to manage public and nonprofit programs and policies. Adam holds a PhD from the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University, and an MA in government from Johns Hopkins University. He has recently co-authored a book, Rethinking Environmental Justice in Sustainable Cities, and his work has appeared in journals such as Public Administration Review, Policy Sciences, Administration & Society, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and Social Science Quarterly.

Stephanie Eckerd

Stephanie Eckerd ([email protected]) is an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee's Haslam College of Business, where she teaches courses in supply chain management. Stephanie works primarily in the area of behavioral operations and supply chain management; her research seeks to improve understanding of how social and psychological variables impact various aspects of buyer–supplier relationship management. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Operations Management, the Journal of Supply Chain Management, and the International Journal of Operations and Production Management. She serves on the editorial review board for the Journal of Supply Chain Management and is an ad hoc reviewer for many other journals in the field. Stephanie earned her PhD in Operations Management in June 2011 from The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business, and served on the faculty of the University of Maryland prior to joining Haslam College. She has previous industry experience in the field of procurement analysis as a defense contractor serving the Missile Defense Agency.