Distinct impact of information access patterns on supplier's non-contractible investments and adaptation for supply chain agility

Abstract

This study explores how distinct information access patterns affect a supplier's supply chain agility. A supplier's specific investments for IT-enabled supply chain coordination and relational adaptation in supply chain operations are identified as the technical and behavioral antecedents to its supply chain agility. Because both are non-contractible elements in formal contracts and complementary to buyer's supply chain coordination information and buyer's specific investments in monitoring and control, either buyer or supplier may hold up their counterpart based on their own information assets. Therefore, this study draws on the theory of incomplete contracts and suggests that both buyer and supplier need to make their idiosyncratic information assets alienable and accessible to their counterpart so that the rent-seeking problem can be alleviated and the supplier's investment and adaptation incentives improved. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that distinct information access patterns can improve a supplier's supply chain agility through the mediation of the non-contractible investments and adaptation made by the supplier. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.