Research On The Influence Of Performance-Aspiration Gap On Supply Chain Bargaining Power

Businesses from all nations are facing tremendous competition as economic globalization continues to advance.In a global setting where supply chain firms are becoming more interconnected,this paper looks at whether firm performance feedback has a contagion effect on the supply chain and whether supply chain firms will look for problems based on the performance of their customers’ and suppliers’ businesses over the previous year and take the necessary corrective action to maximize their own interests.This study,which examines China’s A-share non-financial listed companies from the viewpoint of stakeholders,distinguishes between positive and negative performance gaps and investigates the mechanism by which the performance-aspiration gap affects the supply chain’s negotiating position.It is found that performance-aspiration gap has supply chain contagion effect to some extent.When the performance of firms is poor and there is a negative performance gap,the behavior of firms in the supply chain is more consistent with the "plunder" hypothesis rather than the "sharing weal and woe" hypothesis.The larger the performance gap,the more likely the firms in supply chain are to enhance the overall bargaining power.Instead,when the actual performance exceeds the predicted performance,the supply chain businesses exhibit a state of enough,which means that the shift in the bargaining power of suppliers and customers is not significant.The findings of this paper are still applicable after the supply chain stakeholders are separated into upstream suppliers and downstream customers,and the interference of endogenous problems is removed using the propensity score matching method,Heckman two-step method,and instrumental variable method.This study’s expansion analysis reveals that from a firm’s internal perspective,the capacity for sustainable growth and the amount of cash on hand can significantly enhance the supply chain companies’ ability to predict the future performance trend of the core firms and reduce the increase in supply chain bargaining power in a negative gap situation.According to the external business environment,the positive relationship between the performance-aspiration gap and supply chain bargaining power is significantly strengthened as industry concentration rises,whereas firms in western regions will experience greater tolerance from supply chain stakeholders and a corresponding decline in supply chain bargaining power.In addition,this paper discovers that supply chain stakeholders,influenced by investors and creditors,are more likely to protect their own interests and increase their bargaining power when firms in difficulty face increased financing constraints.However,suppliers and customers still have faith in the corporations with relatively high institutional ownership,so they won’t simply increase their bargaining power even if there is a negative gap for those companies.The following three features highlight the potential research contributions of this paper:First,this paper explores the similarities and differences of various performance scenarios on the decision-making of significant stakeholders in the firm supply chain and advances understanding of the performance feedback literature.Second,by addressing the supply chain as a whole,this paper responds to the call for improved supply chain management.Finally,this paper uses the sustainable growth ability and cash holding level of enterprises as proxy variables of internal potential and external environment,and also introduces the perspectives of creditors and institutional investors and other stakeholders to enrich the research on the economic consequences of the behavior of corporate stakeholders.