A network is made up of nodes and links. The smallest unit that consists of both these network elements is a dyad made up of two nodes (a buyer and a supplier) and the link that connects them (a buyer–supplier relationship).
Naturally, the focus of the supply chain management literature has been on this dyad. For instance, a buyer affects a supplier through its supplier evaluation and certificate programs, as well as long-term agreement practices. The relationship between a buyer and its supplier has been characterized as cooperative or adversarial. We have learned a great deal about supply chains through such studies in dyadic context.
However, we submit that in a network, a dyad is not the smallest unit of a network. In fact, the smallest unit is a triad, made up of three nodes and the links that connect them. If so, how would this recognition guide us as we move forward to investigate supply chains as a network? What would be its implications to the genre of the literature on buyer–supplier relationships?
In order to capture the essence of a network, two things must be examined, at a minimum: how a node affects another node and how a link affects another link. The smallest unit of network arrangement where this occurs is a triad. As shown in Fig. 1, in a triad, we have a network arrangement where we can study a node affecting a node (e.g. A affecting B or C) and a link affecting a link (e.g. AB affecting AC or BC). A dyad shows how a node affects another node, but it is not able to address how a link may affect another link. In this regard, it is the triad that captures the basic essence of a network and allows us to study the behavior of a network.
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Fig. 1.
Triad.
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To the best of our knowledge, Simmel (1950), a philosopher and sociologist, was the first to contemplate the difference between a dyad and a triad. One of the notable scholars that has extended Simmel's work is Caplow, 1959 and Caplow, 1968. In his book, Two against One: Coalitions in Triads, Caplow studies the triadic dynamics exhibited in Hamlet by Shakespeare. The predominant dyad in that story occurs between Claudius (the king) and Gertrude (his wife and Hamlet's mother). Hamlet appears as an isolate until he connects with his mother, who is now informed of the truth about the murder of his father. She utters the following words:
“O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots As will not leave their tinct.”
With these words, a new coalition is formed and enters a triad. As per Fig. 1, A and B represent Hamlet and his mother, respectively, while C represents the king. The relationship exists between A and B (son and his mother in a new coalition) and B and C (the queen and the king bound by new marriage). As Claudius plots the murder of Hamlet, B now covertly comes to Hamlet's aid. When Hamlet remained as an isolate, the relationship dynamics were much simpler—a dyad and an isolate. Once the triad is formed, complexities multiply and take on the network characteristics.
Such triadic dynamics extend beyond the individual level toward larger organizations and even nations. Simmel (1950) and other scholars that wrote about Simmel (e.g., Caplow, 1959 and Caplow, 1968; Mills, 1954 and Mills, 1958) have explicitly pointed out how such triadic dynamics scale to large social entities. Political scientists have explored US–China relations during the cold war, for instance, in the context of third parties such as Taiwan, Japan, or the Soviet Union. As supply chain researchers, the level of analysis that matters to us would be firm–level relationships.
Simmel and other scholars have explicated the importance of studying the triads while pointing out the inadequacies of the dyads. In a dyadic framework, the focus is on the relations specific to a pair of firms. Such relational context turns a blind eye to the fact nodes are embedded in a larger supply network—the dependency of one firm on the other is contingent on the availability of the alternative third firm (Cook, 1997; Cook et al., 1983; Davis, 1963). Therefore, while a dyadic framework allows us to describe the interaction between two firms, it cannot fully account for the relational behaviors of the two firms embedded in a network (Wasserman and Faust, 1994).
Therefore, to fully interpret the relational behavior of a firm, we need invariably to look beyond the dyad for answers. As the next logical step after having studied dyadic buyer–supplier relationships for several decades, a triadic relationship consideration becomes imperative to further understand the buyer–supplier dynamics in supply networks.
