Losing Managerial Discretion: The Unexplored Risk of Collaborative Information Sharing

Abstract

Managerial discretion can be conceptualized as the range of options a manager is free to pursue in order to pursue long-term strategic performance.  Supply chain management, along with other initiatives such as knowledge management, technological innovation and collaborative competition, suggest that efficiency gains accompany collaborative information sharing with suppliers, customers, and even competitors. Other than the presumed competitive intelligence risks associated with sharing proprietary intelligence, the literature has not addressed how the short term operational performance imperatives of collaborative information sharing may create a level of information transparency that can hamper managerial discretion, and thus strategic performance over the long run.  We investigate this gap in the literature and provide a conceptual model that provides an insight into managerial discretion and its affect on operational and strategic performance of firms.