Effects of managerial ties and trust on supply chain information sharing and supplier opportunism

Abstract

Managerial ties and trust are important factors in facilitating collaboration and reducing opportunistic behaviour. There is, however, a lack of empirical evidence on how these relational factors influence the sharing of information among supply chain partners. For example, do stronger managerial ties help to improve supply chain information sharing (SCIS) and reduce supplier opportunism? To what extent SCIS is influenced by managerial ties and trust? How do managerial ties interact with trust in influencing SCIS? Using data from 272 Chinese manufacturers, this paper examines the impact of managerial ties and trust on SCIS and supplier opportunism. The results show that, through trust managerial ties can significantly influence the extent of information sharing and the quality of the information shared. Managerial ties also have a direct impact on the extent of information sharing, but not on the quality of the information shared. The main implication for management practice is that the quality of the information shared – rather than the extent of information sharing – should be seen as the main leverage in reducing supplier opportunism.

Keywords:

• supply chain information sharing
• trust
• supply chain management
• marketing–operations interface
• China

Acknowledgements

The authors greatly appreciate the anonymous referees for the valuable and helpful suggestions to improve the paper. The research is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (70971042, 71172075, 71371006, 71090403, 71131003), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-13-0219), Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (20130172110029), Key Project of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research of Ministry of Education (#12JZD042) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, SCUT (2013ZZ0093, x2gsD2133310).