Supplier competition and investment of effort are important concerns in supply base design. They are affected not only by the number of suppliers, but also by their capacity profile. This paper studies supply base design in terms of the number and capacities of suppliers, considering both supplier competition and investment of cost-reduction effort. We analyze a buyer who invests in capacities ...

In recent years, business rule management has become an important component of enterprise information systems. Business rules represent guidelines about how an enterprise should conduct its business and provide better service for customers. Business rules are being widely deployed in supply chains to support real-time decision making. The research reported in this paper is aimed at designing a ...

This study seeks to better understand the factors contributing to the adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS) as on-demand sourcing option. Grounded in transaction cost theory (TCT), we developed a research model for assessing SaaS-sourcing at the application level. Four hypotheses with three TCTbased constructs (application specificity, environmental uncertainty, and usage frequency) and one ...

In complex supply chains, the benefits and costs of technological innovations do not always accrue equitably to all parties; their adoption may thus critically depend on sourcing relationships and incentives. In a setting with uncertain and endogenous process yield, we study the potential of two features—contract design and sourcing channel—to create mutual benefit in decentralized value chains...

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the various company managers who participated in the surveys of Yorkshire & Humberside and Northern Ireland. Abstract Multinational enterprises occupy a prominent position in most UK regional economies. The contribution of these firms to employment and growth in the host region will be enhanced if they purchase material inputs from local firms ('local sour...

Supplier sourcing strategies are a crucial factor driving supply chain success. In this paper, we investigate the implications of uncertain supplier reliability on a firm’s sourcing decisions in an environment with stochastic demand. In particular, we characterize specific conditions under which a firm should choose a single versus multiple supplier sourcing strategy. In an environment with bot...

A growing trend to simultaneously insource and outsource the same information technology (IT) activities (“concurrent IT sourcing”) has not yet received research attention. Although it is widespread and recent empirical studies have detected that in-house IT can complement IT outsourcing, when and how concurrent IT sourcing pays off is not yet understood. This study introduces the notion of con...

Constructing a good conference schedule for a large multi-track conference needs to take into account the preferences and constraints of organizers, authors, and attendees. Creating a schedule which has fewer conflicts for authors and attendees, and thematically coherent sessions is a challenging task. Cobi introduced an alternative approach to conference scheduling by engaging the community to...

In the everyday business world, the sourcing process of multiple goods and services usually involves complex negotiations (via telephone, fax, etc) that include discussion of product and service features. Nowadays, this is a high-cost process due to the scarce use of tools that streamline this negotiation process and assist purchasing managers’ decision-making. With the advent of Internet-based...

T his study develops an analytical model to evaluate competing retail firms’ sourcing strategies in the presence of supply uncertainty. We consider a common supplier that sells its uncertain supply to two downstream retail firms engaging in price competition in a horizontally differentiated product market. The focal firm has a dual-sourcing option, while the rival firm can only source from the ...