Managing the unexpected: advancing knowledge on negative and positive events in buyer-supplier relationships

There exists a sizeable body of research on supply chain disruptions, with much of the emphasis (understandably) on major events, such as the effects and handling of explosions, earthquakes, or emission scandals. However, the whole day-to-day business in purchasing is overshadowed by the implications of a VUCA-world: unexpected events, like a missed deadline in a joint new product development project, are much more frequent and practically relevant than the headline-making disasters. Furthermore, unexpected events are not necessarily negative: it is also true that in reality buyers and suppliers often fulfill their obligations beyond what is contractually expected from them. Therefore, this paper addresses the practically relevant cases of how purchasing can handle everyday events which are either unexpectedly negative or surprisingly positive. How can damaged trust be repaired in the negative case, and how can the value generated by positive events be claimed by purchasing? Rigorously answering such practically relevant, yet academically underexplored questions —by means of a combination of scenario-based experiments with more than 1,000 purchasing and sales professionals and expert interviews—generates novel insights for purchasing managers and research alike.