Purpose

Buying firms are increasingly exposed to sustainability risk arising from negative conditions or potential events in their supply base that might provoke adverse stakeholder reactions. Procurement managers at these firms can pursue multiple strategies to address this risk with suppliers, including acceptance, monitoring-based mitigation, avoidance and collaboration-based mitigation. This study aims to investigate how perceived risk, supplier dependence and financial slack resources contribute to the strategic preferences of these managers.

Design/methodology/approach

A vignette-based experiment with procurement managers is used to examine the factors affecting the managers’ strategic preferences in managing supplier sustainability risk.

Findings

The empirical results revealed that the procurement managers’ preference for avoidance or collaboration strategies was stronger when they perceived higher risk, but their preference varied based on the degree of supplier dependence. Specifically, when they perceived a high level of risk, procurement managers were more inclined toward a monitoring strategy with dependent suppliers and preferred an avoidance strategy when they dealt with independent ones. Financial slack was also an influential factor: managers with more slack at their disposal preferred to collaborate with suppliers to address the risk; on the other hand, limited slack shifted their preference toward an acceptance strategy, regardless of the level of risk.

Originality/value

This study helps to develop a more nuanced picture of how procurement managers make challenging and complex trade-offs when responding to supplier sustainability risk.

中文翻译：

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管理供应商可持续发展风险：一项实验研究

目的

采购公司越来越多地面临因供应基地的负面条件或潜在事件而产生的可持续性风险，这些风险可能会引起利益相关者的不利反应。这些公司的采购经理可以采取多种策略来与供应商一起解决这种风险，包括接受、基于监控的缓解、避免和基于协作的缓解。本研究旨在调查感知风险、供应商依赖和财务宽松资源如何影响这些管理者的战略偏好。

设计/方法论/途径

对采购经理进行的基于小插曲的实验用于检查影响经理在管理供应商可持续性风险方面的战略偏好的因素。

发现

实证结果表明，当采购经理感知到风险较高时，他们对回避或合作策略的偏好更强，但他们的偏好因供应商依赖程度而异。具体来说，当采购经理感知到高风险时，他们更倾向于对依赖供应商采取监控策略，而在与独立供应商打交道时更倾向于采取回避策略。财务宽松也是一个影响因素：拥有更多闲置资金的管理者更愿意与供应商合作来应对风险；另一方面，有限的宽松性使他们倾向于接受策略，无论风险水平如何。

原创性/价值

这项研究有助于更细致地了解采购经理在应对供应商可持续性风险时如何做出具有挑战性和复杂的权衡。