Browsing by Author "Humphries, Andrew"

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    Co-opetition: the ability to co-operate and compete together
    (The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, 2017-04-01) Mirzabeiki, Vahid; Humphries, Andrew; Wilding, Richard D.
    In 1996, logistics professionals began to become excited about a new supply chain paradigm. Co-opetition – a combination of co-operation and competition – was the title of a best-selling business book by two American academics, Adam M Brandenburger and Barry J Nalebuff, from Harvard and Yale business schools respectively. As the name implies, the basis of the idea is collaboration between competitors, a concept that is not as bizarre as one might expect. Why? Because those businesses with supply chain challenges and requirements that will be closest to a given business’s own supply chain challenges and requirements will generally be its competitors. In the motor industry, for instance, tyre, battery and exhaust system manufacturers and distributors must deliver to the same dealerships and aftermarket retail outlets; and grocery manufacturers must deliver to the same supermarket regional distribution centres, wholesalers, and retail outlets. In such circumstances, pointed out Brandenburger and Nalebuff, co-opetition made a lot of sense. When it comes to logistics and transport, there have been fewer high-profile examples, at least in terms of direct co-opetition, as opposed to firms collaborating through the shared and co-ordinated use of a third-party logistics provider. This article explores the Co-opetition between Nestle and Pladis within logistics. Barriers and wider lessons are outlined.
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    Long Term Collaborative Business Relationships: The Impact of Trust and C3 Behaviour
    (Westburn Publishers, 2004-11-01T00:00:00Z) Humphries, Andrew; Wilding, Richard D.
    Long-term, collaborative business relationships are like marriages where tolerance, forbearance and some reduction of freedom as well as innovation are necessary to ensure success. Trust and co-operative behaviours are known to be essential ingredients in securing an environment of continuous improvement but, how they are correlated has yet to be tested. The paper describes a research project within a sample of long-term monopoly businesses as a novel approach to bringing trust and cooperation, co-ordination and collaboration (C3 Behaviour) into sharper focus without competitive distractions. It was found that a correlation between trust and C3 Behaviour and the success of the collaborative relationship exists.
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    Managing Key Business-to-Business Relationships
    (Sage Publications, 2007-01-01T00:00:00Z) Ryals, Lynette; Humphries, Andrew
    Key account management (KAM) is a rapidly growing area of interest in business- to-business marketing. However, unnoticed by marketing, a quiet revolution has taken place in supply chain management (SCM), where the traditional emphasis on least-cost transactions has given way to a focus on long-term relationships with a few key suppliers. It is thus apparent that the two disciplines are converging. This article uses a cross-disciplinary approach to explore whether these developments from the field of SCM provide insights into key business-to- business relationships. A detailed case study of a long-term relationship between a business-to-business services provider and a key customer in the construction industry suggests there is a definable overlap. The supply chain model illuminates five important elements of KAM and offers a promising method for the evaluation of such relationships. As a result of the research, both supplier and customer companies implemented actions to improve and strengthen this important relationship.
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    Marriage without the option of divorce: measuring the quality of long-term collaborative business relationships.
    (2003-06-01T00:00:00Z) Humphries, Andrew; Wilding, Richard D.
    An often unforeseen feature of long term, collaborative business relationships characterized by the investment of highly specific assets is the partners become locked into the arrangement. Exit may become too costly and difficult due to the loss of irretrievable investments and the adverse effect on business continuity (Hirschman, 1970). But, as long as goodwill and benefits flows are maintained, all is well. However, if problems are encountered that undermine trust, commitment will suffer and the inadequacy of contract law to adequately resolve complex relationship problems will be realized. An unhappy marriage results without the option of divorce. The partners can either co-exist in a mutually disadvantageous arrangement or, realizing the lack of an escape choice, learn to adapt and to re-invigorate the partnership. This paper describes a research project that examined the pure monopolistic business relationships within UK Defence Procurement. From the researchers point of view this environment is particularly interesting because the variability resulting from competition is removed and the links between the partner organisations, including the effect of key behavioural variables, are more visible. It aims to show how a suite of techniques was used to measure and describe an environment that has received scant attention from management researchers. These relationships are characterized by high technology, long durations (up to 40 years), strategically important products and services and the regular expenditure of large sums of public money. They have a tradition of adversarial relationships, late, over- budget projects and low economic returns (Parker & Hartley, 1997). The study aimed to understand the dynamics within these relationships and to determine if it was possible to identify those factors that maintain goodwill and benefit flows and those that might re-invigorate failure situations.
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    Supply network relationships: a review of empirical evidence
    (2012-11-01T00:00:00Z) Humphries, Andrew; Mena, Carlos
    Supply networks are prevalent industry structures which, like the academic literature, are complex, confusing and short on practical guidance. We evaluate the current position of empirical research to expose the main constructs that can be used to study cooperative supply network relationships, to identify emergent themes, gaps and shortcomings, to share insights with managers and, to propose future research approaches. Five significant drivers of supply network relationship behaviors are identified: complexity, power, alignment of objectives, knowledge management and coordination. This paper provides a unique, topical 'map' of the supply networks field and proposes a theoretical model for integrating the many diverse concepts into a general framework. This will enable researchers to focus more effectively on its relational dynamics. We also give managers some key guidance for successful operations within these essential structures.
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    Sustained Monopolistic Business Relationships: A UK Defence Procurement Case
    (Cranfield University, 2003-08) Humphries, Andrew; Wilding, Richard D.
    Business-to-business relationships within sustained monopolies, such as those within Defence Procurement, have received limited attention by Management Researchers. This is unusual because under these market circumstances typically there appear to be few incentives to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes despite their strategic policy importance. The purpose of this thesis is therefore, to determine the influential relationship factors between the UK Ministry of Defence and its Industrial partners within a predominantly monopolistic Defence Procurement business. The approach adopted for this research project is exploratory and inter-subject area. It uses quantitative and supportive qualitative data to examine the problem through an economic model using Supply Chain Management, Relationship Marketing and Transaction Cost Economics. A self-selected census of 54 business relationships is carried out from both the buyer and supplier perspectives through staff questionnaires and team leader semi-structured interviews. The findings from this research show, contrary to the expectation of the theoretical model, a positive relationship success situation with a spectrum of both positive and negative behavioural factors present. However, a significant adversarial influence is a suite of issues that are endemic to the business in question such as old products, obsolescence, staff and organisational upheavals, poor end-customer visibility and lack of investment in modern procedures and systems. Within the monopoly environment these accentuate managers’ frustrations due to lack of freedom of action. The primary contribution of this research is therefore, an increased understanding of the business-to-business relationship dynamics within long-term, closely coupled, collaborative, business-to-business arrangements as exemplified by UK Defence and the results are likely to be of interest to both academics and managers.
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    Sustained monopolistic business relationships: A UK defence procurement case.
    (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z) Humphries, Andrew; Wilding, Richard D.
    Business-to-business relationships within sustained monopolies, such as those within UK defence procurement, have received scant attention by management researchers. This is unusual because under these market circumstances there appear to be few incentives to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes despite their strategic policy importance. This paper argues that an understanding of the monopolistic environment using a transaction cost economics theoretical framework and relationship marketing concepts provides an approach to solving this problem as well as testing aspects of these disciplines empirically in a novel area. This plan is supported by the results from a pilot study and the paper concludes by proposing a substantial research project to test this hypothesis in the UK defence procurement situation.
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    Sustained Monopolistic Business Relationships: An Interdisciplinarity Case.
    (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2003-12-01T00:00:00Z) Humphries, Andrew; Wilding, Richard D.
    Business-to-business relationships within sustained monopolies, such as those within UK Defence Procurement, have received scant attention by Management Researchers. This is unusual because under these market circumstances there appear to be few incentives to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes despite their strategic policy importance. This paper argues that an understanding of the monopolistic environment using a Transaction Cost Economics theoretical framework and Supply Chain Management, Relationship Marketing and Transaction Cost Economics concepts provides an innovative, interdisciplinarity approach to solving this problem as well as testing aspects of these disciplines empirically in a novel area. This paper describes the results from a substantial research project to test this hypothesis in the UK Defence Procurement situation. It reveals a number of key dynamics within the sustained monopolistic relationships surveyed and suggests considerable potential for further research.
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    A taxonomy of highly interdependent, supply chain relationships: The use of cluster analysis
    (Mcb, 2007-01-01T00:00:00Z) Humphries, Andrew; Towriss, John; Wilding, Richard D.
    Cluster analysis provides a statistical method whereby unknown groupings of similar attributes can be identified from a mass of data and is well-known within marketing and a wide range of other disciplines. This paper seeks to describe the use of cluster analysis in an unusual setting to classify a large sample of dyadic, highly interdependent, supply chain relationships based upon the quality of their interactions. This paper aims to show how careful attention to the detail of research design and the use of combined methods leads to results that both are useful to managers and make a contribution to knowledge.
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    UK Defence Supply Chain Relationships: a Study of Sustained Monopoly.
    (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z) Humphries, Andrew; Wilding, Richard D.
    Business-to-business, supply chain relationships within sustained monopolies, such as those within UK Defence Procurement, have received scant attention by Management Researchers. This paper describes the results from a substantial, exploratory research project that used Williamson’s (1975) Organisations Failure Framework as a theoretical model. Surprisingly, it revealed that many issues surrounding Supply Chain Management implementation were similar to those found in ‘normal’ markets and that it played an important part in reducing the inherently negative effects of monopolistic relationships. The research sheds new and useful light on the dynamics of this unusual business situation for both managers and academics.
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    Understanding collaborative supply chain relationships through the application of the Williamson organisational failure framework
    (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2006-01-01T00:00:00Z) Wilding, Richard D.; Humphries, Andrew
    Many researchers have studied supply chain relationships however, the preponderance of open markets situations and ‘industry-style’ surveys have reduced the empirical focus on the dynamics of long-term, collaborative dyadic relationships. Within the supply chain the need for much closer, long-term relationships is increasing due to supplier rationalisation and globalisation (Spekman et al, 1998) and more information about these interactions is required. The research specifically tested the well-accepted Williamson’s (1975) Economic Organisations Failure Framework as a theoretical model through which long term collaborative relationships can be v