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theses

The formation and change of institutions in society has become a focal point of interest for institutional practitioners and researchers. Contracting for supply chain management (SCM) is a widespread institutional practice that implicates an increasing and diverse network of people, organizations, and organizing activities. It also informs how such a large-scale institution is formed through communication. This dissertation answers the question, How does the contracting process of SCM shape interaction into functional forms of communication that address problems and challenges in the pursuit of a supply chain’s technical and social goals? It addresses the practical problem that supply chain design is narrowly focused on material flows of goods, services, and funds. It advances the design stance toward communication (Aakhus & Jackson, 2005) to supplement and extend related theories: institutional theory, the communicative constitution of organizing, communication pragmatics, and design. So it aims to restore normative instrumentality in explaining the interactional construction of institutions, particularly of supply chain contracting. To test and develop this communication-design view of contracting, a case study was conducted of the contracting process at a large public university in the northeast of the United States. Using ethnography and ethnomethodology, the process was reconstructed as a practice for designing and managing common institutional disagreements and arguments about contracts and contracting. Based on this normative-descriptive process reconstruction, a typology was derived of three distinct types of argumentative issues that practitioners order hierarchically for disagreement management. They use it for strategic management of issues about (a) (proposed) supply chain relationships and operations; (b) performances of contracting actions; and (c) institutional activities constitutive of individual actions and the overall practice. The design issues typology is central to how contracting activity is ‘communication-design rationally’ constructed in response to and anticipation of (potential) problems in SCM. It facilitates identification of different types of process breakdowns, which were seen to either autocorrect the process, or to obstruct the institutional legitimacy and/or organizational effectiveness of contracting activity. The findings carry important implications for the design stance and related theories about institutional formation, and for the contracting practice of the research site and SCM at large.

ETD_5111

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Leon V. Laureij

doi:10.7282/T3Z60M26

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.