BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//132.216.98.100//NONSGML kigkonsult.se iCalcreator 2.20.4// BEGIN:VEVENT UID:20260404T140047EDT-0259vgexrU@132.216.98.100 DTSTAMP:20260404T180047Z DESCRIPTION:Mr. Zhexiong TAO\, a doctoral student at McGill University in t he Operations Management area will be presenting his thesis defence entitl ed:\n\nMANUFACTURER’S RESPONSES TO EXTERNAL PRESSURES: POWER AND CORRUPTIO N\n\nDate: Friday\, October 6\, 2017Time: 2:15 pmLocation: Room 310 (Samue l Bronfman Building – 1001 Sherbrooke Street West)\n\nAll are cordially in vited to attend the presentation\n\nStudent Committee Chair:  Professor Sa ibal Ray and Professor Shanling Li\n\nAbstract\n\nThis thesis consists of three essays which focus on how manufacturing firms respond to external pr essures: supply chain power and corruption.\n\nThe first essay examines ho w weaker manufacturers respond to the dominance of stronger suppliers and/ or customers within supply chain relationships. The extant literature on p ower in supply chains has focused on the dominant players who control and influence the behavior of weaker actors. These weaker actors have been por trayed as passive targets\, their roles as decision-makers being largely l eft unexamined. In contrast\, we take the perspective of the weaker manufa cturers and find that they counteract the dominance of more powerful partn ers by using distinctive strategies dependent on the source of the power ( suppliers or customers). Specifically\, we find that weaker manufacturers often adopt exploration strategies to countervail the power dominance of s uppliers\, and use exploitation strategies to deal with more powerful cust omers. In dealing with both dominant suppliers and customers\, weaker manu facturers are prone to pursue exploration and exploitation strategies simu ltaneously\, and hence become ambidextrous. We also determine exactly how manufacturers’ responses to powerful chain partners are moderated by exter nal competitive intensity and their own internal resources.\n\nThe second essay investigates the influences of exploration and exploitation strategi es on supply chain integration which\, in turn\, affects operational and b usiness performance. Using survey-based data gathered from 788 manufacture rs in 22 economies with a wide coverage of Europe\, North America\, South America\, and Asia\, we find that manufacturers which pursue exploitation strategies are more likely to gain explicit knowledge from suppliers\, cus tomers\, and internal sales units\, whereas those that pursue exploration strategies often acquire tacit knowledge from suppliers\, customers\, inte rnal sales units\, and internal new product development units. The results of our analysis suggest that manufacturers pursuing exploration strategie s are more likely to search a wider scope of inside and outside firms than do manufacturers pursuing exploitation strategies. We reveal that design– manufacturing integration is effective in improving operational and busine ss performance\, and customer integration is positively related to operati onal performance.\n\nThe third essay investigates manufacturing firms’ res ponses to corruption. Specifically\, this study examines the effect of hom e country bribery on firms’ international sourcing by developing two compe ting hypotheses. On the one hand\, home country bribery enables a firm to lower import barriers\, thus promoting international sourcing. On the othe r hand\, bribery helps the firm build political connections with local gov ernment officials which strengthens the firm’s position within the domesti c country and thus decreases the incentive of exploring foreign supply sou rces. Adopting the instrument variable two-stage least squares method\, we test these two competing arguments using a sample of 36\,069 firms across 113 countries from the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys. We find that home country bribery decreases\, rather than increases\, international sourcin g. This suggests that firms that pay more bribes to home country governmen t officials are more likely to choose domestic than foreign suppliers. In general\, this dissertation finds that manufacturing firms develop distinc tive strategies to deal with different types of external pressures (i.e.\, supply chain power and corruption). Specifically\, we provide empirical e vidence that these firms create tailored strategies dependent on whether t hey are facing powerful suppliers\, powerful customers\, or both. Further\ , we find that manufacturers actually reduce their international sourcing intensity in order to respond to home country bribery.\n DTSTART:20171006T181500Z DTEND:20171006T211500Z LOCATION:Room 310\, Bronfman Building\, CA\, QC\, Montreal\, H3A 1G5\, 1001 rue Sherbrooke Ouest SUMMARY:Thesis Defense Presentation: Zhexiong Tao URL:https://www.mcgill.ca/channels/channels/event/thesis-defense-presentati on-zhexiong-tao-269868 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR