Spotlight: Fostering SME supplier-enabled innovation in the supply chain: The role of innovation policy
This week we have an interview with Kostas Selviaridis and Martin Spring about their work entitled “Fostering SME supplier-enabled innovation in the supply chain: The role of innovation policy”
”Buying organizations collaborate with their suppliers to innovate, and increasingly seek to tap into the innovation potential of technologically adept small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who are new to them. Engagement with technology-based SMEs as possible suppliers can be constrained by institutions (e.g., rules, regulations, and norms of conduct) embodied in the buying organization's procurement and supply chain strategy, processes, and practices. Although prior research has examined how institutional forces influence supplier-enabled innovation, little is known about institutional failures that are particularly germane to innovative SMEs and impede collaboration between these SMEs and buying organizations. Consistent with the focus of the second emerging discourse incubator (EDI) on researching the effects of institutions (e.g., regulations) and public policies on supply chains, we investigate how enacted innovation policies address SME-specific institutional failures in a public sector context, that of the English National Health Service (NHS). Our qualitative research reveals that public agencies responsible for policy enactment seek to promote SME supplier-enabled innovation in the supply chain through institutional change and mitigation, SME connectivity to supply chain actors, and SME supplier development support. We synthesize our findings into a research model and set of propositions which theorize on the specific mechanisms underpinning the interventions of policy-enacting agencies and their effects. Our study contributes to the literature on supplier-enabled innovation and to research focusing on collaboration between buyers and innovative small suppliers. More broadly, we generate theoretical insights regarding the role of public agencies enacting policy as a class of non-firm actors whose interventions influence the supply chain. The findings also add to our understanding of the interplay between supply chains and institutions.”
Full Article link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jscm.12274
https://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12274
About the Authors:
Kostas Selviaridis
My research programme focusses on how procurement and contracting practices shape supply markets, and help promote innovation, sustainability and resilience in supply chains. My current work places particular emphasis on the role of public contracting, for example with respect to: 1) stimulating innovation that addresses grand societal challenges and improves public services (e.g. healthcare), including novel solutions developed by technologically-adept SMEs, 2) promoting resilience in drug supply chains and improving supply security of medicines and vaccines. Through such research, I have cultivated an interest, more broadly, in the interplay between supply chain management and public policy. My research has attracted funding from multiple sources internationally, notably the British Academy for Humanities and Social Sciences, the Research Council of Norway, and the Swedish Defence Research Agency.
Martin Spring
Martin Spring is Professor of Operations Management at Lancaster University Management School, UK. He is also Director of the School’s Centre for Productivity & Efficiency. His research has focussed on supply chain relationships, industrial policy and business-to-business services. In the business services field, he has published (with Luis Araujo) widely-cited papers on the conceptualisation of services, and has recently completed a project funded by the UK Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, examining the adoption of Artificial Intelligence by mid-tier law and accounting firms. On industrial policy, his 2017 paper (with Alan Hughes, Katy Mason and Paul McCaffrey) has been influential in linking operations and supply to public policy. More generally, he has published in many leading journals in operations, supply chain management and industrial marketing, and is Associate Editor at Journal of Operations Management and the International Journal of Operations & Production Management.