Operations managers clearly play a critical role in targeting plant-level investments toward environment and safety practices. In principle, a “rational” response would be to align this investment with senior management's competitive goals for operational performance. However, operations managers also are influenced by contingent factors, such as their national culture, thus creating potential tension that might bias investment away from a simple rational response. Using data from 1,453 plants in 24 countries, we test the moderating influence of seven of the national cultural characteristics on investment at the plant level in environment and safety practices. Four of the seven national cultural characteristics from GLOBE (i.e., uncertainty avoidance, in-group collectivism, future orientation and performance orientation) shifted investment away from an expected “rational” response. Positive bias was evident when the national culture favored consistency and formalized procedures and rewarded performance improvement. In contrast, managers exhibited negative bias when familial groups and local coalitions were powerful, or future outcomes—rather than current actions—were more important. Overall, this study highlights the critical importance of moving beyond a naïve expectation that plant-level investment will naturally align with corporate competitive goals for environment and safety. Instead, the national culture where the plant is located will influence these investments, and must be taken into account by senior management.

Collaborating with a supplier in a buying firm's new product development (NPD) project is commonly advocated and adopted, but does not always improve project performance. Some pre-existing collaboration contexts, such as buyer–supplier NPD projects, are especially exposed to supplier opportunism due to the uncertain nature of the collaboration process. Adopting agency theory and transaction cost theory perspectives, we examine: (i) contextual antecedents and project consequences of supplier opportunism and (ii) if these causal influences vary in different cultural and institutional contexts. Using a survey sample of 214 United States (U.S.) and 212 Chinese buying firms’ responses about buyer–supplier NPD projects, we find that supplier opportunism is significantly influenced by the task and relational contexts. We also show that supplier opportunism damages both design quality and efficiency, two aspects of project performance. When comparing U.S. to China, we find that task and relational contexts have a greater impact on supplier opportunism in the U.S., but design efficiency is less hurt by supplier opportunism there. Finally, we show challenges of preventing supplier opportunism in certain NPD collaboration contexts, and offer solutions for overcoming these challenges.

Buyers often make supplier selection decisions under conditions of uncertainty. Although the analytical aspects of supplier selection are well developed, the psychological aspects are less so. This article uses supply chain management and behavioral decision theories to propose that attributes of the purchasing situation (category difficulty, category importance, and contingent pay) affect cognition that, in turn, affects a supply manager's choice. We conducted a supplier selection behavioral experiment with practicing managers to test the model's hypotheses. When the context involves an important or difficult sourcing category, higher risk perceptions exist that increase preference for a supplier with more certain outcomes, even when that choice has a lower expected payoff. However, the presence of contingent pay decreases risk perceptions through higher perceived supplier control. We also find that a manager's risk propensity increases preferences for a supplier with less certain outcomes regardless of perceived risk. Our model and results provide a theoretical framework for further study into the cognitive aspects of supplier selection behavior and provide insight into biases that influence practicing supply chain managers.