Demand- and supply-side cross-functional relationships: an application of disconfirmation theory

Over the past half decade, research has consistently highlighted the need to improve cross-functional relationships and integration between the demand side (DS) and supply side (SS) of organizations. Yet, in practice, firms have made little progress toward more effectively integrating these diverse functional areas with friction between customer-facing and operations/supply functions often resulting in suboptimal business performance. Extant cross-functional relationship research is variously criticized for failing to capture interaction between the DS and SS of the organization in an integrative manner for focusing on the content of interaction but overlooking how exchanges take place, for taking a simplistic view of cross-functional relationships as being dichotomously good or bad, and for lacking a solid theoretical foundation. To address these shortcomings, this paper draws on disconfirmation theory to propose a conceptual framework that captures the process and content of interactions between DS and ...