Relationship Dynamics in the Pineapple Supply Chain: Empirical Evidence from the Garo Hills of Meghalaya

Deepak Bhagat and U.R. Dhar
Additional contact information
Deepak Bhagat: Deepak Bhagat is Assistant Professor, Department of Management, North Eastern Hill University, Tura Campus, Tura, Meghalaya 794002. E-mail: dip19bhagat@gmail.com
U.R. Dhar: U.R. Dhar is Dean (Academic), Royal School of Business, Royal Group of Institutions, Guwahati, Assam. E-mail: ur.dhar@rgi.edu.in

Global Business Review, 2014, vol. 15, issue 4, 747-765

Abstract: Though early research in supply chain management focused mostly on transactional exchange, recent studies have shown a shift in focus from transactional to relational exchange. The research studies in traditional agricultural supply chains also followed a similar pattern. As a result, very little empirical information is available on the factors that affect the quality of the relationship between the supply chain players (partners) in the traditional agriculture supply chains. The focus of early research was mainly on the economics of channels and the structure of social relations within the chain members was somewhat ignored. This research study aims at studying the relationship dynamics in supply chain of pineapple in Garo hills of Meghalaya (India) from a smallholder’s perspective. Although the study began with 270 small growers to identify pineapple supply chains of the study area, the final study (relationship analysis) was limited to 167 small growers who sell to wholesalers. Factor analysis followed by regression analysis was conducted to identify and analyze the principal factors expressing relationships in pineapple supply chain. The study finds that cooperation, trust and a caring attitude from wholesaler influence the satisfaction of smallholder pineapple growers in a positive way. However, power dependence and the opportunistic behaviour of the wholesaler affects the satisfaction of smallholder pineapple farmers in a negative way.

Keywords: Supply chain management; relationship dynamics; factor analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0972150914543410 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:globus:v:15:y:2014:i:4:p:747-765

DOI: 10.1177/0972150914543410

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Global Business Review from International Management Institute
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().