When Your Emotions Get the Better of You: Decision-Making in the Aftermath of Unsustainable Supplier Behavior

Amidst growing calls for supply chain transparency and the phenomenon of chain liability, procurement managers face mounting pressure to quickly and adequately respond to unsustainable supplier behavior identified in their supply chains. To explain managers' decision-making in the aftermath of such behavior, we assess the role of managerial emotions in response to economic, social, and environmental non-compliance, as well as the boundary conditions under which these emotions occur. We develop and test* our theorizing via scenario-based vignette experiments and semi-structured interviews with procurement and sourcing professionals. 

Emily C. Dickey joined the KLU as a PhD candidate in September 2020 under the primary and secondary supervision of Prof. Dr. Prisca Brosi and Prof. Dr. Jan C. Fransoo, respectively. Her dissertation research lies at the crossroads of Operations and Supply Chain Management (OSCM) research and Organizational Psychology research, specifically focusing on the role of managerial emotions in OSCM contexts. With a focus on behavioral experiments, she is particularly concerned with the effect managers' emotions have on social sustainability decisions, like worker safety, decent working hours in operations, and supplier selection processes in global supply chains.