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Supply chain complexity
(2019)
Supply chain management (SCM) is known as a competitive strategy in today’s business. Through increasing product variety, structures and processes, managers struggle with an increase in supply chain complexity (SCC), which leads to a negative influence on a firm’s efficiency in terms of lead times, flexibility and costs. In order to manage complexity, supply chain managers need to know its drivers or define appropriate management measures. However, managers can no longer manage SCC internally. In order to cope with this challenging issue and achieve overall benefits, it is necessary that the complete supply chain is involved in optimising supply chain processes. An aligned supply chain should ensure that supply chain partners benefit from cost savings. At the same time, supply chain processes should be agile to respond to market volatility, while also being cost-efficient to survive in the highly competitive world.
In this dissertation, three research cases are conducted with different focus areas whereby first drivers for internal and external SCC are explored in a single case study. In order to gain a representative overview of relevant drivers, not only interviews with top managers from a manufacturer are held but also with key managers from suppliers and customers. With the interviews held from the upstream to downstream supply chain, this part of the dissertation sheds light on topical SCC drivers and provides some hypotheses for managing detailed and dynamic SCC. With this case, an academic contribution is provided to better understand the relevance of SCC.
In a second step, another qualitative study addresses the requirements of a supply chain. The basis for this part is the triple-A supply chain of Hau Lee (2004), where he states from a theoretical perspective the prerequisites of a supply chain, namely agility, adaptability and alignment. In this dissertation, this approach is reviewed from a managerial perspective. It is analysed which key performance indicators of a firm are affected by the three aforementioned qualities. Finally, it is presented how agility, adaptability and alignment are linked together. In order to gain a common understanding, semi-structured interviews are conducted to extend literature through managerial experience.
In a third step, a quantitative simulation creating a discrete-event simulation model is provided to evaluate inventory and logistics costs’ effects in a company that faces significant SCC. The target is to align the supply chain by changing the existing distribution channel to direct delivery. The result shall demonstrate the financial benefit for the supply chain partners, as well as illustrating the conditions and risks when changing supply chain processes.
This dissertation shows that companies are increasingly faced by SCC. In order to respond flexibly to market volatility, supply chains must be agile to ensure that financial risk shall not alarm a company’s existence. Therefore, it is recommended to align the supply chain with a collaborative supply chain model.
With the start of digitalization and the initiation of a whole new industry of digital services, some of the well-established marketing wisdoms are now under scrutiny. This also holds for the importance of customer win-back for any firm – a belief that has actually never really been questioned. While related research focuses on mature industries and highlights the profitability of win-back, to date no study known to the authors has addressed the role of reacquired customers compared to first-lifetime customers in the interplay of acquisition and retention for digital firms. This is especially important when assessing firms’ current winback strategy and forecasting the development of acquisition and retention success of reacquired compared to first-lifetime customers. This study proposes a win-back assessment framework that enables firms to assess their win-back strategy and to detect problems in acquisition or retention of first-lifetime and reacquired customers. The authors demonstrate the use of framework on transaction data from a digital subscription service and data from a field experiment with that same service provider. They analyze the data from a new analytical perspective compared to extant research, which they call “cohort perspective” and jointly investigates acquisition and retention of first-lifetime and reacquired customers, who started their subscription around the same time (i.e. cohort). The results show the need for the cohort perspective by unveiling the contradiction that reacquired customers can “live” longer than in their previous lifetime (on average 328 days), but that they “live” shorter than first-lifetime customers of the same cohort ( ̶ 19%). The authors explain the rationale of this observation and discuss its implications.
Exploring business ecosystem properties with a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship activities
(2019)
With the rising importance of the external economic environment of organisations and open and collaborative innovation, the last two decades have seen an emergence of diverse literature streams and practitioner interpretations of business ecosystems. However, most of the scholars’ attention has been on ecosystems that function in the information and telecommunication technology industries and interactions between actors driven by economic interests. Moreover, business ecosystems analysis was embedded in the strategic management and organizational design literature, which primarily investigated the ecosystem leader using examples of powerful multinational corporations such as IBM, Microsoft, Google and Apple. These new powerful corporations significantly influenced the nature of the global competitive landscape (e.g. app economy), enabled the emergence of new business models (e.g. platform business) and even new forms of entrepreneurship (e.g. blogging and self-publishing). However, little remained known about the actors at the periphery of business ecosystems – that enable the functioning of such ecosystems - and the entrepreneurship processes that take place in the ecosystem environment.
With the goal of contributing to the extant literature and creating a better understanding of the central factors that foster evolution, and the functioning and growth of today’s business ecosystems, the first project of this doctoral dissertation provides an overview of the ecosystem concept evolution in literature and in practice. Based on the findings of this project, this dissertation takes two qualitative empirical directions. To expand on the scope of the ecosystem concept, in the second project it looks at open and collaborative innovation processes in the fashion industry, analyses the role of individuals in business ecosystems and highlights the emergence of new forms of entrepreneurship. Following a worldwide growing startup trend and increased corporate engagement in diverse corporate venturing activities, the third project empirically investigates inter-organisational knowledge flows and value creation and capture processes in the innovation ecosystem environment. This dissertation contributes to the open and user innovation and entrepreneurship literature and provides practical implications for managers and entrepreneurs interested in participating in an existing business ecosystem or considering starting one on their own.
Essays on health economics
(2019)