Dr. Umanath Narayan of University of Cincinnati presented his work with Fred Ahrens, his doctoral student, in a research workshop at NMIMS University on January 31st. The topic of the presentation was, “Knowledge Exchange Behavior in a Supply Chain Dyad: A Game-Theoretic Investigation.” The report on the workshop, as reported by Umanath Narayan, is as follows.
Of interest to researchers and managers alike are the conditions that facilitate or attenuate the knowledge exchange behavior (KEB) between a manufacturer and a supplier — a supply chain dyad. Self-interest of the members is an important factors that determines the extent of KEB. While trust would be expected to be an obvious precursor to KEB, a review of literature reveals the evidence to the contrary is also abundant. Researchers including Kim, Umanath, Ahrens and others have found that sometimes, contrary to intuition the correlation between trust and KEB is negative.
Umanath and Ahrens explain this counter-intuitive phenomenon. Kim et. al. (20110 have shown that a viable contingent factor in explaining the relationship between trust and KEB is knowledge complementarity (KC). Based on empircs and theories, Umanath and Ahrens hypothesized that knowledge interdependence (KID) and dependence asymmetry (DA) may be additional contingencies in KEB. Using Social Exchnage Theory, the researchers formalize the definition of these variables and include them as additional contingencies.
Using a Game Theoretic Framework, the researchers arrive at directional results — some of which is counter-intuitive. For example, in a high KC state, even when there is mistrust between them the dyad members will faciliate knowledge exchange if there is high interdependence between them. In this case, the correlation between trust and KEB will evidently be negative.
This and other results are being currently empirically tested through laboratory experiments and fied studies.
Filed by Dr. Gurumurthy Kalyanaram, Dean, Research, NMIMS University
NMIMS University on Research and Policy 