Balancing collaboration and
its impact on resilience
Pre-MSc Research paper
by
MAX VAN DORT
University of Groningen
Faculty of Economics and Business
Abstract
The global dependencies existing between firms and supply chains have been shown when en-tire countries went into lockdown, calling on the resilience of the companies within. This re-search addresses the advantages as well as the less vigorously rere-searched drawbacks of collab-oration, and how this affect resilience. The impact of collaboration on mitigating the impact of COVID-19 was addressed by conducting six structured interviews. The results showed how collaboration created resilience during normal conditions but caused drawbacks such as a de-crease in adaptability. This research contributes to the field of supply chain resilience by taking an alternative view to the dogma which is ever more applicable now.
Keywords: Collaboration, Drawbacks, Predictability, Vulnerability, Opportunism, Resilience
Supervisor: M.J. van den Adel
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Introduction
Due to the trend in globalisation, companies are increasingly becoming more vulnerable to dis-ruptions and troubles in other countries. The Corona outbreak has painfully shown the global economies’ dependence on China. Car manufacturers have had to postpone car assembly after the Chinese New Year, whilst other firms have had to give revenue warnings and the oil price has plummeted since the Chinese export stopped (Van der Linde, 2020). The Dutch part of Air France-KLM has ceased all non-vital investments, regulated consultant work and has asked its 28.000 employees to take their vacation days effective immediately. They fear a significant revenue drop now that the aviation companies’ European networks will be affected just as their Asian ones. The Asian disruption costs the company an estimated €150-200 million as stated in the Dutch Financial Times (Verbeek, 2020). The situation outlined above is the result of a serious disruption. Most disruptions are not as severe as the current one, but an estimate made by the Business Continuity Institute (2019) states that more than 70% of all companies experi-ence a significant disruption in their lifetime. Such events call on the resiliexperi-ence of firms and supply chains, or on the ability to anticipate, react and recover from unexpected events (Deloitte, 2017).
Researchers and managers alike are trying to mitigate the effects of these disruptions, implementing risk management as well as -vulnerability strategies, with the goal of creating resilience to better cope with disruptions (Jüttner & Maklan, 2011). Recent literature reviews (Hohenstein, Feisel, Hartmann, & Giunipero, 2015; Kamalahmadi & Parast, 2016; Tukamuhabwa, Stevenson, Busby, & Zorzini, 2015) of resilience have found collaboration to be an important, even formative element. Collaboration allows companies of any size to react to disruptive events (Cao & Zhang, 2011). By sharing information, partner companies such as suppliers can adjust to the situation because they become more knowledgeable about the supply chain conditions. -Consequently, this allows the focal firm to respond in a more flexible man-ner, increasing performance of both the focal- and partner firm during the disruption. (Gibson & Dibble, 2013; Marrone, 2010; Scholten & Schilder, 2015).
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or come to a complete stop (Scholten & Schilder, 2015). Following such a single sourcing strat-egy can increase the focal firms vulnerability as well as the potential impact of the disruption (Christopher & Peck, 2004; Jüttner, 2005; Pettit, Fiksel, & Croxton, 2010). Another downside is the risk of opportunism. This occurs when one party exploits the partners resources such as knowledge in a disproportionate manner, creating an imbalance which can harm the other part-ner (Cao & Zhang, 2011; Williamson, 2008).
Most of this research has been conducted on aspects covering organizational behaviour. The drawbacks of far-going collaboration have not been studies sufficiently within the context of resilience (Wieland & Wallenburg, 2013). Furthermore, strictly focussing on collaboration can be detrimental to resilience, as is argued by Tukamuhabwa et al. (2015), the mechanisms of which remain unexplained. Overall, researchers remain rather indecisive regarding the benefits and drawbacks of collaboration (Cao, Vonderembse, Zhang, & Ragu-Nathan, 2010), especially within the context of resilience. This paper will aim to analyse both the advantages and drawbacks of collaboration with regards to resilience. By specifying both the positives as well as the negatives an appropriate balance between these elements may be found, or atleast the trade-offs which exist. Therefore, the research question is formulated as follows; How do
the advantages and drawbacks of collaboration affect resilience?
This paper will provide insights into collaboration, and when the drawbacks of collaboration trade-off against the advantages including their impact on resilience which may follow.
The following chapter will contain a literature review regarding the research phenom-ena. Subsequently, the research methodology which was used to analyse the findings will be validated. Following the findings is the findings discussion, which includes the conclusion as well as research implications and – limitations.
Literature review
ResilienceResilience can be defined as follows; ‘the ability of a system to return to its original state or
move to a new, more desirable state after being disturbed’ (Christopher & Peck, 2004: 4)
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same- or even a better state than prior to the disruption (Hohenstein et al., 2015). This capability enables business to keep performing, for example by allowing for fast recovery times (Scholten, Scott, & Fynes, 2014). Resilience can be achieved by creating and maintaining the concept’s antecedents. The literature review by (Tukamuhabwa et al., 2015) revealed five constructs that precede resilience: flexibility, redundancy, collaboration, visibility and velocity. These ante-cedents can both fortify- or trade-off against each other. For example, by deploying redundant resources both flexibility and velocity can be created. Conversely, very intense collaboration can cause the leakage of intellectual property, opening the focal firm up to unnecessary risks (Jüttner & Maklan, 2011).
Flexibility is the ability to adapt to changing market- and stakeholder requirements, whilst sacrificing minimal time and effort (Erol, Sauser, & Mansouri, 2010) flexibility can be operationalized as having extra suppliers, multi-skilled workers and a flexible distribution chan-nel. These elements help organisations coordinate processes as well as cope with situations which are highly uncertain (Manuj & Mentzer, 2008; Scholten et al., 2014). Following Jüttner & Maklans’ (2011) definition of resilience capabilities, redundancy is considered a “route” to-wards flexibility. Therefore, redundancy is not seen as a formative element of resilience within this research paper.
Visibility refers to the insight supply chain partners have into their supply chain, from start to finish. It is determined by the ability to timely access and share qualitative information regarding their supply chain operations (Christopher & Peck, 2004; Jüttner & Maklan, 2011). High visibility prevents unnecessary interventions and assures effective decision-making in un-certain situations (Christopher & Lee, 2004). Through the insight into the chain, it helps identify vulnerable suppliers which in turn provides time to prepare against potential problems (Jüttner & Maklan, 2011).
Velocity is the ability to quickly react to market changes. It focusses on the efficiency with which speedy adaptions can be made to maintain business performance. Velocity coincides with the pace of adaptions, whether these are decisions or physical products (Stevenson & Spring, 2007).
Collaboration
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performance (Cao & Zhang, 2011; Holweg, Disney, Holmström, & Småros, 2005) Even though companies sacrifice resources for the sake of the collaboration, the overall benefits generally outweigh these costs, creating a winwin for both parties in the form of increased profits and -knowledge (Cao & Zhang, 2011). Cao et al. (2010) have argued seven aspects which define (supply chain) collaboration. The elements and their definition are shown in Table 1.
Table 1
Elements of collaboration
Element Definition
Information sharing Degree, accuracy and timeliness with which a firm shares relevant infor-mation with partners.
Goal congruence Degree to which supply chain partners align their goals with the objec-tives of the supply chain.
Decision synchroni-sation
The extent to which supply chain partners chose to take decision regard-ing the supply chain such as forecastregard-ing collectively.
Incentive alignment The degree to which shared performance evaluation systems are intro-duced and risks and rewards are shared.
Resource sharing The extent to which capabilities, assets and resources existing outside the firm are leveraged for enhanced performance.
Collaborative com-munication
The “level” of communication between partners; defined by medium, fre-quency, direction and intent.
Joint knowledge cre-ation
Extent to which partners work together to become more knowledgeable about the market and the competitive environment.
Adapted from Cao et al (2010).
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et al., 2005; Wieland & Wallenburg, 2013). This helps firms better steer and adapt their business in turbulent environments (Christopher & Peck, 2004; Wei & Wang, 2010) because visibility and velocity are increased through the collaborative relationship.
Drawbacks of collaboration
Even though Scholten & Schilder (2015) argue collaborative activities always exhibit a positive relationship towards resilience in their research, other literature still is divided.
We identified three drawbacks of collaborating. Collaboration can distract firms from their own operations, create overdependence and increase the risk of opportunistic behaviour.
The first drawback of collaboration is the distraction it may cause. Collaboration gener-ates costs because it requires time and energy (Silvia, 2018). A firm opergener-ates using limited resources which can only be spent once. When all these resources are spent externally on main-taining relationships, they cannot be spent again internally on the focal business. Another im-plication of this resource distribution is the fact that when employees are focussed on maintain-ing the external relationships, they are much less concerned with what is happenmaintain-ing in their own company. This further reduces the effectiveness of the remaining resources (Choi, 2002; Gibson & Dibble, 2013).
The second drawback is (over) dependence. High dependencies can decrease resilience, because firms start to rely too much on external resources (Wieland & Wallenburg, 2013; Xiao, Petkova, Molleman, & van der Vaart, 2019). When partner firms have a strong relationship and depend on each other for resources such as information, performance can decrease in case of (time) pressure. When either firm experiences pressure, they can stop sharing that information which their partner firm uses as a resource. Initially, the other party loses access to an asset. Another consequence however is that this party experiences this loss as a decrease in commit-ment in the collaboration (Fugate et al., 2012), hampering collaborative performance and there-fore operational performance and resilience (Cao & Zhang, 2011; Wieland & Wallenburg, 2013). Companies can counter this by creating more visibility in their partners actions so that they can anticipate such events or can enter additional collaborations. Both of these practices require resources (Christopher & Peck, 2004; Williamson, 2008) which need allocation and therefore can further distract the focal firm.
The third drawback is opportunism. ‘Opportunism can be defined as supplying
incom-plete or distorted information, with the goal of obscuring or misleading’ (Williamson, 2007:
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& Zhang, 2011). Collaboration only works when both partners formalize their goals and efforts (Min et al., 2005). By formalizing the collaboration, firms create visibility so that the behaviour of their partners becomes more predictable (Johnson, Elliott, & Drake, 2013; Wuyts & Geyskens, 2005). When this visibility is not created partners can influence the relationship. This imposes the risk of opportunistic behaviour (Min et al., 2005; Johnsen, Howard & Miemczyk, 2019). For example, when a company tries to enter a new market, it may decide not to take any precautions since it is verbally promised exclusivity by his supplier. If the supplier then decides to also deliver products to another aspiring competitor the focal firm experiences a disadvantage whilst the supplier profits of both parties (Johnsen et al., 2019). This unpredictable behaviour decreases resilience because visibility and velocity are respectively decreased through uncer-tainty and loss of resource exclusivity.
Conceptual framework
By synthesising the information above, the following framework (Figure 1) has been created. On the one hand, the framework positions collaboration as the antecedent of the other resilience antecedents. The other side of the framework shows the potential downsides of collaboration which can hurt performance by consuming valuable time or by creating overdependence.
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Methodology
The proposed relationships will be investigated by means of a multi case study, which is deemed most fitting for this research. A multiple case study should be used when the goal of the research is theory building i.e. describing key variables and the relationships between them (Voss, Tsikriktsis, & Frohlich, 2002). Because the focus currently is being put on the impact and mit-igation efforts of individual companies a case study is the best fitting approach. Also, this re-search is built on concepts which can be operationalised in multiple ways meaning the investi-gation quickly becomes too complex to draw sensible conclusions using a survey or observa-tions (Yin, 2009)
For this research the chosen unit of analysis is a relationship. Collaboration takes place in the buyer-supplier relationships that manifest between firms. The impact of these relation-ships on resilience will be investigated by the impact they have on the antecedents of resilience, by the way it creates them or destroys them. The general characteristics of the cases studied, and interviews conducted are shown in Table 2.
Table 2 Case setting Company Sector Nr. Of employees Revenue in millions (€) Interviewee Time (min) G Retail 80.000 8.400 Franchiser 60
H Retail 80.000 8.400 Supply Chain
Manager
60
I Industry 7.500 2.000 Supply Chain
Di-rector
80
J Retail 360 472 Manager Service
Logistics
45
K FMCG1 78.000 19.500 Procurement 65
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L Smart
Manu-facturing
40 Non-disclosed Operations Team-leader
70
The differentiation in sectors as well as the size of the companies listed in Table 2 allow for an integral view of the impact of collaboration on resilience. The goal of this research is to gain insight into the general drawbacks and balance of collaboration, regardless of sector orientation. For example, a big multinational (K) may perceive the benefits and drawbacks entirely different than a scale-up (L).
Data collection
Six interviews were conducted by three researchers to acquire the data for investigating the research phenomenon. Every interview was always comprised of three people: two researchers and the interviewee. The researcher who set up the interview was responsible for conducting the interview. The second researcher read along and assured all information was sufficiently collected, by asking any questions which were not explicitly answered according to the protocol. Due to the lockdown as of 18/3/20, all six interviews were taken virtually via Skype. Before the interview, each interviewee received a consent form to ensure confidentiality and cooperation. All interviews were guided by using a semi-structured interview protocol which was developed by the three researchers to ensure that all the information requirements for every individual are met. This protocol ensures the data are coherent across the different organisations, allowing for comparability and reliability (Yin, 2009). The protocol consisted of standard ele-ments such as organization details and characteristics of the disruption which was to be ana-lysed. The entire interview protocol can be found in the Appendix. The interviews were rec-orded and subsequently transcribed verbatim and coded. The focus was put on the resilience of the organizations through collaboration and the potential downsides of this collaboration. After transcribing the data, the files were sent to the interviewees who were given the opportunity to redact any undesirable content to ensure consent and validity (Yin, 2009)
Data analysis
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These codes are the descriptive codes. These descriptive codes were then linked to either the collaborative elements defined by (Cao et al., 2010) or the three drawbacks. These third-order themes were then linked to the three resilience antecedents, either in a positive or negative way. The antecedents therefore are the third-order themes. Every case was coded individually and summarized to gain better insight into the case’s intricacies (Eisenhardt, 1989). Following this initial analysis, all codes were synthesised into a single table. Codes were filtered regarding their impact on the three resilience antecedents, whether provided advantages or drawbacks. This synthesis was used for the cross-case analysis which allowed us to create an integral view of the relationship of benefits and drawbacks with regards to resilience. A coding excerpt is shown in Table 3.
Table 3 Excerpt of coding
Company First-order code Descriptive code Link to third order theme Link to ben- efit/draw-back Link to supply chain resili-ence G
“The pressure we’ve experienced
during the hoarding-rage was un-precedented. Combine that with the governmental restrictions and you’ll see mitigation processes ei-ther become impossible or simply not work.” Re-distrib-uting re-sources Resource sharing Collaboration Flexibility G
“The pressure we’ve experienced
during the hoarding-rage was un-precedented. Combine that with the governmental restrictions and you’ll see mitigation processes ei-ther become impossible or simply not work.” Forced SC-restrictions Distrac-tion of activities Distraction -Velocity H
“We chose to postpone and/or
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H
“If I understood correctly, every
country which had an corona out-break was followed by hoarding. Management took decisions by looking at other countries. When the corona virus seriously impacted It-aly we started increasing our safety stocks of products with high shelf lives. External point of view Joint knowledg e creation Collaboration Visibility I
“That’s what we need to aim for;
in-creased transparency by communi-cating with our customers and sup-pliers about what we do, why we do it and the effects that follow.”
Data integra-tion Infor-mation sharing Collaboration Visibility I
You can't overcome this crisis alone, simply because it's all over the world. If it were something in the Netherlands alone, it might still be easy to solve a lot of things out-side the Netherlands. We couldn't have solved this any simpler or bet-ter, and as far as that's concerned, the subject is actually as you ask the question: is that you should always be able to solve these things to-gether. SC-interde-pendencies Overde-pendence Drawback - Flexibility J
“Want to procure products and
that’s the only information we’re working with. Which products to buy, and not with any potential con-sequences.” Focussing on a single piece of in-formation Infor-mation deficit Opportunism - Visibility // Velocity J
“We were able to use our Polish
employment agency to pull people from other sectors. We also pulled people (resources) from the suppli-ers of our company restaurant,
Pulling re-sources SC-partners Resource sharing Collaboration Flexibility L
“You can do many things, but
imag-ine you’ve been conducting your business satisfactory with the same supplier for years. You can’t just find a new supplier who checks all these boxes in a few weeks.”
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L
“First we need to extract as much
information as we can from the cus-tomer. Why did they leave or chose not to leave a potential supplier, what is their history?”
Supplier se-lection Infor-mation sharing Collaboration Visibility
Findings
This section will analyse the impact collaboration has on resilience, either via its advantages or drawbacks. Drawbacks mainly become prevalent when the collaboration becomes (too) intense. This relationship will be treated after both the advantages and drawbacks.
Collaboration
Collaboration has many merits. By collaborating, companies are able achieve more by combin-ing their efforts. This helps them achieve the three resilience antecedents.
Visibility
By sharing demand and supply information with partners, more insight into the supply chain and its dynamics such as inventory levels is created (K). This need is acknowledged by Organ-ization I who states; “That’s what we need to aim for; increased transparency by
communi-cating with our customers and suppliers about what we do, why we do it and the effects that follow.” By allowing other parties to share information, learning opportunities can improve
business operations and in this case disruption management. “You want a more reliable supply
of information more quickly. Information is coming in regardless via numerable channels. The process has just quickened and we started studying it for learning opportunities.” (Organization
J). Historic supplier information can also be used to gain more insight into their potential, as is exemplified in L’s business strategy wherein they handle customer supply chain activities. “First we need to extract as much information as we can from the customer. Why did they leave
or chose not to leave a potential supplier, what is their history?” Visibility can also be created
by joint goal setting, or goal congruence. When (internal) partners all adhere to the same “rule”, complexity is decreased because the other stakeholders have better knowledge about their part-ners end goals, making them more predictable. “Within the subject of providing information we
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Velocity
By synchronising decision-making, organizations can better cope with changing demand through increased coordination. This helps them better respond and allocate resources to achieve performance. “Yes, collaborating has a major impact. It helps us reconcile supply and
demand like you just mentioned. By working as a single entity (decision synchronization, red.) we can operate using quality information, enabling us to place our products in the right place at the right time.” (Organization H). Resource sharing can also be used to create velocity. A
customer of L specifically chose for L because of their competences in digitalization. By part-nering, the client firm increases their own speed and efficiency through L’s IT-resources. “The
way with which they processed orders, handled suppliers and managed order-flow was very outdated. By using our Digital Backbone, we are able to uplift their operations.”
Flexibility
Organization L anticipated the disruption and coordinated with its offshore suppliers to ship as many components as possible. “When we knew the disruption would hit we assured component
deliveries. This way, we could continue to produce whilst the suppliers went into lockdown.” A
similar mechanism occurred at Organization G, wherein they redistributed resources to decrease surpluses and deficits. “It sometimes happens that a certain shop, for example, has too much of
a certain product. Then, in consultation, the choice is made to transport the product regions where several our stores are located, which then offer this trade for a floor price”. While L
and G chose to quickly partner with its suppliers, Organization I took another approach. By creating a centralised crisis team with decision-making authority, overall visibility regarding the disruption impact and reaction speed were increased “Then we started preparing by creating
a crisis team. This team allowed us to quickly communicate and take decision throughout the entire company.”
Drawbacks of collaboration
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Visibility
Visibility can be impaired through uncertainty added by working with parties other than the focal firm. Uncertainty decreases the predictability of other parties, decreasing SC visibility. Supplier uncertainty directly impacts firm performance because the affected firms need to in-corporate this uncertainty as well, distracting them. “Procurement has to search and vet second
sources. Planners constantly need to redact their schedules and inform the client, whilst I con-stantly have to juggle capacity because I do not know when to scale up production.”
(Organi-zation L). Companies who lack visibility and who depend on supplier collaboration for the supply of SC-information can suddenly become “steerless” when the information flow stops or becomes unreliable. “If a supplier knows something about a problem that’s located further up
the chain they will notify you of this. The problem however is that I don’t know how long this problem has lingered.” (Organization L). Finally, relying on partners to provide information
about SC-dynamics can create opportunistic behaviour, because the other party can potentially only share information benefiting him. “We operate from a customer perspective, but don’t
assess the impact this perspective may have on our suppliers, or vice versa.” (Organization I);
“We want to procure products and that’s the only information we’re working with. Which
prod-ucts to buy, and not with any potential consequences.” (Organization J). Velocity
This uncertainty and therefore distraction is further increased by the time pressure caused by the disruption. “We chose to postpone and/or shorten administrative tasks like controlling
ac-tivities or shortened procedures to create extra processing capacity.” (Organization H). By
focussing on collaboration, companies can get distracted of the activities they are supposed to do. For instance, resources which are stocked at suppliers (people) usually are not as efficient as resources which are inherent to a company. “Order pickers already had to pick an increased
amount of containers and products. The demand increase paired with the influx of new employ-ees resulting in incredible cluttering in the warehouse.” (Organization H). Because these
re-sources operate less efficient they use up a larger portion of the “time” resource. Another activ-ity which can distract are activities which simply stem from having relationships with suppliers or customers. By collaborating with or depending on (offshore) suppliers, troubles inherent to those countries can be brought along. “We’ve experienced a disruption in at least half of our
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relationship becomes too strong, the focal firm can expose itself to supply risks. These supply risks are virtually impossible to mitigate, due to the global dependencies which coexist between firms and countries. “If we were to operate solely without using customer- and supplier input
and only rely on China, things would go incredibly wrong. You can’t solve this crisis on your own.” (Organization I). These dependencies decrease resilience, because firms cannot or will
not switch failing suppliers as quickly as they should be. “You can do many things, but imagine
you’ve been conducting your business satisfactory with the same supplier for years. You can’t just find a new supplier who checks all these boxes in a few weeks.” (Organization L).
Flexibility
By relying on external suppliers, flexibility may be reduced. Cultural differences may require mitigation measures, such as those focusing on forwarding orders to assure timely delivery. “Suppliers need to be ready for transport well before the Chinese new-year because you never
know what will come of it and how the capacity will be afterwards. The new-year increases your inventories and order quantity to accommodate for the uncertainty.” (Organization I).
The risk of opportunism can cause companies to incur extra costs which are meant to protect the focal firm. For instance, arrangements could have to be made which help protect valuable company resources. “When you’re developing certain resources with regards to
commerciali-zation, you want to keep them to yourselves.” (Organization I). When companies start
protect-ing their resources, they become more restricted in actions they can take, therefore reducprotect-ing overall flexibility. “We had to put an order limit on certain product groups to ensure an even
distribution of products amongst supermarkets.” (Organization J). Individual stores were
sud-denly not able to respond to the increased demand.
Balancing collaboration
Whilst collaboration can be advantageous, it can also hamper organisations. The main ad-vantages and drawbacks are shown in Table 4.
Table 4
Advantages and drawbacks
Visibility Velocity Flexibility
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For instance, visibility can be increased through the sharing of goals and information. By striv-ing for the same goals and lettstriv-ing others know about their decisions, partner behaviour and therefore SC-dynamics become more predictable. However, this is contingent of the relation-ship. When many suppliers must be managed or when the supply of information is one-sided or partial, uncertainty is increased therefore decreasing predictability and visibility.
Supply chain velocity can be increased by synchronizing decisions and by levering com-petencies in the supply chain. Such combined operations operate more efficiently than compa-nies operating solely. Operating in such a fashion however also creates dependency risks. Firms become more vulnerable when they depend strongly on the competences of a SC-partner. Firms also become susceptible to risks stemming from suppliers when the dependence increases i.e. they become entangled. This entanglement prohibits firms from switching suppliers in case of an emergency, decreasing resilience as shown by Organization L.
Finally, collaborating can increase the SC-flexibility through increased reaction speed. When the collaboration is strong, focal firms and SC-partners can assign and assure resources to one another which ensures speedy and reliable adaptions. Such strong collaboration can also create additional costs. When firms collaborate so strongly that they assign resources, the part-ner firm can gain insights into the intricacies of the focal firms’ operations. These possibilities then must be countered by creating protective measures, which can hamper the “free move-ment” of decision making and collaborating in the SC. This use of measures implies companies are aware of the risks of opportunism, which may be why no explicit examples of this behaviour were found.
Discussion
The research question was formulated as follows: How do the advantages and drawbacks of
collaboration affect resilience? The research, quite obviously, showed that collaboration has
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of disruption (Pettit et al., 2010). The same is true for the structural allocation of resources i.e. resource sharing (Brandon-Jones, Squire, Autry, & Petersen, 2014). By quickly pulling re-sources from their employment agency and company restaurant suppliers, Organization J was able to rapidly respond to the hoarding rage which occurred.
The drawbacks of collaboration mainly occur when the level of collaboration too high (Gibson & Dibble, 2013). For instance, resources in the form of time can be drained, distracting companies (Choi, 2002) This is what happened at Organization G, when they pulled additional resources from suppliers. Also, the added coordination may hamper reaction speed (Williamson, 2007). Organization K solved this by creating an internal- and centralised deci-sion-making team which was responsible for handling the Corona disruption. When companies are highly dependent of their partners, their ability to respond to disruptions (velocity) is de-creased (Wagner & Bode, 2006; Xiao et al., 2019). This occurs especially when these partners (suppliers or customers) are the source of the disruption for the focal firm, for example what happened at Organization I. Another implication of high dependence are the protective measures that need to be taken. When collaboration is high, partners could try to “steal” pro-prietary information for their own benefits. This risk can be mitigated by deploying protective mechanisms regulating the collaboration, but this causes rigidity and therefore lowered flexi-bility in Organization J for example. Finally, when firms lack visiflexi-bility and rely on SC-partners to provide information, the other party generally has (information) resource superiority (Skipper & Hanna, 2009). The other party might not share all information or may only do so when he really has too, creating uncertainty (Williamson, 2007) and therefore lowering resili-ence. Distractions may also impose the risk for opportunism. When companies are unaware of their environments, for example because they are too busy managing relationships, partners can leverage their SC-visibility advantage (Avinadav, Chernonog, & Ben-Zvi, 2019).
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Implications for theory
Our findings showed collaboration increases resilience through added visibility (Holweg et al., 2005; Wei & Wang, 2010), increased efficiency due to resource sharing (Cao & Zhang, 2011) and heightened adaptability (Min et al., 2005). While collaboration can increase resilience un-der normal conditions, when entire countries went into lockdown (Van Der Linde, 2020) our findings indicated lowered performance. The dependencies negatively impacted resilience be-cause they showed a decrease in manoeuvrability in line with (Xiao et al., 2019) as well as increased uncertainty because resource flows stopped (Wuyts & Geyskens, 2005). These prac-tices increased vulnerability. An interesting observation is the one regarding opportunism. (Jüttner & Maklan, 2011) state that collaboration helps mitigate opportunism, which was not the case in this research. The risk of opportunism was shown to be increased by collaboration, either because the focal firm got distracted (Gibson & Dibble, 2013; Silvia, 2018) or because the focal firm was dependent of the other (Wieland & Wallenburg, 2013).
Further quantitative research could focus on situations with different risk profiles and deduce what kind of collaboration level provides the best risk/reward. Future research could also re-investigate the advantages and drawbacks of collaboration in more stable conditions. The collected data are biased towards the exceptional corona virus disruption and therefore may not accurately represent day-to-day business operations.
Implication for practice
Our findings shed light on the obvious advantages of collaboration, but also on the less preva-lent drawbacks. The findings show that when conditions are stable, resilience can be increased by utilizing the collaborative mechanisms. For instance, joint developments help leverage both the focal firm and partners capabilities, improving performance for both (Cao & Zhang, 2011). In such conditions, collaboration can increase efficiency and decrease uncertainty. However, managers should remain wary. While the exploitation of few, strong relationships is preferable in stable conditions, it can completely immobilize companies when environmental turbulence is high. This risk could for instance be mitigated by partnering strongly with a few suppliers by allocating 80% of spending (on that component) with them and dividing the remaining 20% amongst one or two other parties located differently. This multi-source approach mitigates the risk of suppliers going into lockdown.
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uniformly. In hectic environments, this flow can become less reliable, which can especially hurt when the focal firm cannot provide its own management information. Managers can, just like with the dependence/supply risk mitigate this by either investing in their own visibility creating mechanisms or by using redundant sources for insight into SC-dynamics.
Limitations
This research was conducted as thoroughly as possible. However, as of the imposed lockdown the interviews lack some context because company visits were impossible. Also, this research was conducted during a global pandemic, and therefore may not accurately represent normal collaborative conditions.
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Interview Protocol
1. General Questions (± 10 min)
1.1. Could you please give a brief overview of your organization and its supply chain (up-stream and down(up-stream)?
✔ Core activities and/or products ✔ Organizational goals
✔ Key aspects (organization size, turnover, number of employees) ✔ Number of suppliers (upstream) and customers (downstream) 1.2. Could you please introduce yourself and your role in the organization?
✔ Function ✔ Team ✔ Department
✔ Brief overview of background, education, and experience
2. Main Part (± 45 min)
2.1. Please recall a recent disruption/problem in your supply chain. Could you outline the event in detail: What was the cause, what was the impact, who was involved, was it foreseeable?
✔ Cause
✔ Impact (financial/operational) ✔ Affected suppliers/customers ✔ Indications/warnings of disruption
✔ How does the coronavirus affect your business operations?
✔ Coronavirus has been emphatically in the Netherlands for 4 weeks now. When did you notice the influence of the coronavirus? How did it start?
✔ Were you prepared for such a disruption? How?
✔ In general, how did you react to- and resolve this disruption? ✔ To what degree were your and the company’s KPI’s affected?
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2.2 Next, we would like to specifically focus on the activities outside your organization (with other organizations) undertaken in response to the disruption:
2.2..1. With whom did your organization collaborate to resolve the disruption? ▪ Why did you work with these parties?
▪ How dependent is your company on these parties? How does this de-pendence determine the intensity of the collaboration?
▪ Who initiated the collaboration?
▪ Were there situations where a conscious decision was made not to col-laborate? So that you could focus on your own implementation.
▪ Why not other parties? Maybe outside your supply chain? ▪ Did you (ever) collaborate with competitors?
2.2..2. Were these other parties willing to collaborate? Why (not)? ▪ Any constraints for them to collaborate?
▪ What were the actions to overcome unwillingness/constraints?
2.2..3. How did your organization collaborate with these other parties? What forms of collaboration?
▪ Information- or resource-sharing ▪ Attempts to align decisions/incentives
▪ Mode of communication (e.g., email, phone, face-to-face)
▪ To what degree do you cooperate with suppliers to mitigate chainwide sup-ply and demand shocks? (i.e. information and resource sharing, joint deci-sion making)
▪ What kind of information do you share? (i.e. planning and/or inventory lev-els)
▪ If yes, how fast do you communicate new information and to whom? 2.2..4 Did the collaboration change during the different stages of the disruption?
▪ More collaboration before, during, immediately after, or in a longer period after the disruption?
▪ Why? How?
2.2..5 How would you describe the relationship between your organization and these parties in terms of trust?
▪ How did that affect the (intensity of) collaboration? 2.2.6 How dependent is your organizations on these parties?
▪ How did that affect the (intensity of) collaboration?
27 2.3..1 Why (not)?
▪ Was collaboration difficult and/or complex?
▪ Was collaboration time consuming (i.e., distract from internal activities)? If yes, what have you done to mitigate this?
▪ What aspects of performance where specifically important?
2.3..2. Do you think you could have minimized the impact of the disruption better with less collaboration and focusing on other, internal processes?
▪ Why (not)?
▪ How are the lines of communication within your company and between the collaborative companies? How do these lines help with obtaining critical in-formation and what is your relationship with these other parties? (Willing-ness to cooperate)
▪ Do you use "surplus" resources to cover risks? Think of safety stocks, over-capacity and dual / multi sourcing?
3.1 We would now like to look back:
3.1.1.1 Which activities would you say were the most important for resolving the dis-ruption? Why?
3.1.1.2 Regarding both of these practices, how do you think your company creates resilience? i.e. Does your firm rely on itself and its abilities or do you rely on suppliers to ensure your own operation flows as smooth as possible?
3.1.1.3 Are there things you would you do differently?
3.1.1.4 What have you learned? And how was this implemented?
4 Closing questions (± 5 min)
4.1 Are there topics about the supply chain, disruptions, and collaboration that have not been covered in this interview but that you had expected or that you would like to share your thoughts about?
