The Impact of Anger and Dependence on Supplier Decision-Making

ABSTRACT

Purpose

The research combines social exchange theory with the appraisal tendency framework to explore how anger impacts supplier decision-making when threatened by customers. When making the decision whether or not to comply with customers, suppliers may be influenced by other factors explored in this study, including relational norms, procedural justice, cost-benefit analysis, mimetic isomorphism, relationship quality, dependence, and interdependence.

Method

Over 1,000 respondents were recruited through Mechanical Turk and participated in a scenario-based experiment with vignettes. Using high/low levels of anger, and high-low levels of dependence, each condition assessed compliance and relative importance of supplier outcomes. The study employed mixed-effects logistic regression with a random intercept, Odds-Ratios, and a three-way repeated-measures ANOVA to test hypotheses.

Findings

This study demonstrates that anger reduces compliance and skews five decision-making criteria. Specifically, anger inflates the influence of (1) relational norm violation and (2) procedural justice but reduces the importance of (3) mimetic isomorphism. Contingent upon whether the supplier is dependent or not, anger can lower the influence of (4) cost-benefit analysis (if not dependent) and (5) relationship quality (if dependent).

Research Implications

This manuscript addresses the calls for more research by the academic community suggesting that in order to understand B2B exchanges more deeply Social Exchange Theory (SET) should be combined with other theories.While integrating the appraisal tendency framework (ATF) and SET, this study reduces criticisms about prior research that ignore emotions in social exchanges and provides ideas for how organizational decision-making can be influenced by anger.

Practical Implications

By understanding how anger influences suppliers, both parties can make better decisions and decrease the possibility of relationship dissolution.

Originality/Value/Contribution

This study highlights the role of anger in organizational decision-making.

KEYWORDS:

• Anger
• emotions
• decision-making
• threat
• dependence
• customer
• supplier
• compliance

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Jill Vandermeerschen for assisting with statistical analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.