Exploring the effect of justice, social capital, and power on supply chain disruption recovery : Buyer-supplier dyadic perspectives

A number of studies have brought understanding to supply chain disruption, but the recovery stage – what happens after a disruption event and how organisations can be successfully recovered – has received little attention. This thesis presents two studies that address this gap in the extant literature by incorporating theories that explain the cooperative relationship and influence mechanism in the buyer–supplier relationship. In the first study, by bridging research on justice and social capital theory, it is presumed that these two views can explain the strong relationship that facilitates parties’ interactions and the corresponding collective action effected to recover from the disruption. In the second study, the moderating role of the buyer’s intention to use mediated power (coercive and reward power) during the process of disruption response and recovery in the relationship between the buyer-supplier’s relational capital and their disruption response and recovery performance was investigated. To examine the dyadic nature of the supply chain and reduce the possibility of single rater bias, 239 matched pairs data were collected to adopt a buyers and supplier dyadic perspective. This was geared towards capturing the different perceptions of the relationship and its impact on the disruption response and recovery performance. The main contribution of this research is two-fold. First, this study is one of the first to examine the relationship between the impact of the justice perception on social capital accumulation, impact of accumulation of social capital on the firm’s disruption response and recovery performance as well as the moderating role of power on the link between relational capital and disruption recovery performance. The outcomes of this study allow for appropriate theoretical framing that can lead to understanding of this scantly previously investigated area. Second, having investigated the buyer–supplier’s dyadic relationship in the disruption recovery context, this has led to robust findings being delivered according to both parties’ individual viewpoints. More importantly, this has allowed for a dyadic perspective on the appropriate ways of dealing with such a situation to be uncovered