Buyer-Suplier relationships: the human behavior influence in value creation and appropriation

• Grant number: 11/23850-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: August 01, 2012
• End date: July 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Administration - Business Administration
• Principal Investigator: Luiz Artur Ledur Brito
• Grantee: Janaina Siegler Marques Batista
• Host Institution: Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo (EAESP). Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Many studies in management and in production and operations field have been demonstrating that colaborative buyer-supplier relationships is able to generate value and influence the competitive advantage. Despite the widespread availability of theoretical and empirical research on the subject of buyer-supplier relationship, we found a lack of studies that analyze the human impact and behavioral biases that involves decision-making in these relationships. In addition, contemporary studies exploring the judgement impact and human behavior in production and operations management emerge as an important focus of research. According with that emerges the research question: considering the premise of bounded rationality, how the individual human behavior influence in generation and value appropriation and what are their impacts in supply chain management? To meet these objectives will be used a multi-theoretical and multi-methods strategy. The complementary theoretical approaches to be explored are: Transaction Cost Theory (TCT) with the operationalization of some specific constructs such as bounded rationality; Relational View with the operationalization of the Trust construct; and Social Exchange Theory (SET) with the operationalization of power and justice in collaborative relationships. Methodologically this study is divided into three phases: the first is related to theoretical deepening and check for identification of possible human behaviors that may affect the generation and value appropriation in the supply chain; then there will be a qualitative phase with the verification of such causal mechanisms are empirically present, which will be accomplished through a study of four selected cases; and finally will be performed a controlled human experiment aiming to determine the exact effect on specific dependent variables. As the main contributions of this work, we have a cover to a theoretical gap that refers to the lack of studies considering the human behavior effect in generation and value appropriation in collaborative buyer-supplier relationships; and coverage of a methodological gap refered to use of combined methodology using controlled experiments to test singly hypothesized causal relations.