Social Capital and Sentiment Implications toward Buyer-Supplier Relationships: A Fuzzy Logic Approach

This study further explores the finding that among the four sentiment attributes, Information Sharing and Collaboration are most important in improving Supply Chain Management (SCM) performance. Fuzzy set-based modeling was used to extend the results of sentiment analysis expressed in social media for fit to goals in buyer-supplier partnerships for these two attributes. For the pharmaceutical industry sampled, it was determined that for Information Sharing, it was important that scores from sentiments be high in SCM partnerships to improve performance. Likewise, though slightly more important, a high volume of positive sentiments regarding Collaboration was good for partnerships. This seemingly reinforces the general belief that partners should share knowledge and collaborate positively on projects. Yet, Information Sharing was represented with more membership in high sentiment than Collaboration where it appears that SCM partners consider it important but they may not be expressing sentiment related to collaboration with partners. The contribution of this paper is a refinement of the sentiment analysis to include strength of fit of attributes to goals dependent upon statistical measures. The degree of Fit for each attribute related to sentiment analyses in SCM partnerships is dependent on the setting of the intervals and the belief in the high or low fuzzy probability of achieving the managerial goals. While one attribute may fit a goal level and the strength of the probability of achieving this goal, if the other attribute is not met, the partnership process may be flawed. The process is generalizable to other industries without loss of validity.