Governance of supplier collaboration in technologically uncertain NPD projects

Firms that are searching for new technologies from suppliers through collaborative new product development (NPD) need to devise effective approaches for governing the supplier relationship. Based on in-depth case studies of four collaborative NPD projects, this paper shows that in projects with a high degree of uncertainty (1) firms achieve governance by simultaneously limiting supplier involvement and allowing for high levels of collaboration, (2) transactional and relational governance have distinct roles in achieving limited supplier involvement and establishing high levels of collaboration, and (3) transactional and relational governance are organizationally separated. These findings have implications for the complementary use of relational and transactional governance, as well as for the role of purchasing and R&D in technologically uncertain NPD projects.     

Religiosity and psychological contracts in Asian B2B service relationships

The growing significance of Asia in global trade has meant that service organizations within the region need to build robust relationships with customers that may reside in nations with different socio-cultural backgrounds. This paper draws on the theories of social exchange and social capital to examine how Indonesian service providers build B2B relationships with their Asian customers in the region, when the customers are from non-Islamic nations. This study used a survey to collect its primary data. Data from 312 Indonesian firms revealed that Asian cultural-specific concepts of religiosity not only had a positive impact on transactional and relational psychological contracts, but also dampened psychological contract breaches. Only relational psychological contracts had a positive effect on relational capital and relational wellbeing, despite transactional contracts being intrinsic to these relationships. Relational capital helped to reduce psychological contract breaches and improve relationship wellbeing, whereas psychological contract breaches reduced such wellbeing. Our findings significantly extend research on B2B service relationships and offer valuable managerial insights for service decision makers operating in Asia that involves B2B relationships between organizations with specific and different socio-cultural backgrounds.     

Performance feedback and supplier selection: A perspective from the behavioral theory of the firm

Drawing upon the behavioral theory of the firm, this study explores the behavioral antecedent of buying firms' decisions in supplier selection through relational referrals, beyond the predominant argument from relational network theory. Centering on the risk and uncertainty of searching for new suppliers, this study attempts to integrate the behavioral theory and relational network theory in explaining buying firms' supplier selection. Data from 112 Chinese manufacturing firms were used to test the hypotheses. The results suggest that performance feedback triggers buying firms' decision on the extent of reliance on relational referrals to select suppliers. Outperforming firms are more likely to use relational network to select suppliers while underperforming firms are less likely to use. This relationship will be strengthened when the intensity of market competition and specific investment in buyer-supplier relationship are high.     

Inter-organizational relationships and strategy quality in green supply chains — Moderated by opportunistic behavior and dysfunctional conflict

This paper presents a new research model to examine the factors influencing the quality of strategies developed and implementation in inter-organizational relationships in a green supply chain. In this study, we examine how attitude toward relationship orientation affects inter-organizational strategy quality, and how this association is affected by the opportunistic behavior and dysfunctional conflict. Relationship orientation, measured by relational benefits, relational proclivity, and connectedness, refers to the desire to develop and maintain relationships with green supply chain partners. Data are collected from 451 manufacturing firms that are among the top 1000 Taiwanese manufacturing firms of 2010 listed by Business Weekly. Relationship orientation, or the desire to develop and maintain relationships with collaborative partners, was found to be positively associated with the strategy quality. Our results show that opportunistic behavior and dysfunctional conflict decrease the willingness and damage efforts to establish relationships to enhance the strategy quality for the green supply chain.     

Relationships Between Businesses and Marketing Research Firms: Impact of Partnering on Performance

Many firms are turning from discrete, arms-length, adversarial exchanges with a multitude of marketing research suppliers toward long-term, collaborative relationships with a smaller number of “partners.” Advocates of partnering believe that it is a way to reduce total costs and improve quality, while dissenting firms believe partnering can breed complacency. This article presents the results of a study that examines performance outcomes (product quality, service quality, cost efficiency, timeliness, and overall customer satisfaction) and the degree to which a client partners with its marketing research firms. Results indicate a relationship between partnering and increased performance in all five areas. Implications for managers include the possibility of better performance from research firms if the relationship is more collaborative in nature.     

What factors influence buying center brand sensitivity?

Building on information processing theory (IPT), this empirical study investigates the factors that drive a buying center's level of sensitivity to brand information. The authors propose that buying center brand sensitivity is related in a curvilinear fashion with purchase importance and purchase complexity, and that these relationships are moderated by several environmental, firm, and product factors. Data provided by 273 organizational buying center members confirm the presence of an inverse U-shaped relationship between purchase importance and brand sensitivity, strengthened in conditions of high brand presence and high end-customer demand. Purchase complexity and brand sensitivity appear to relate in a U-shaped fashion but only in light of the moderating effects of product tangibility. The relationship between purchase complexity and brand sensitivity appears stronger when buying firms are small and have prior contractual ties with their selling partners. These results offer guidance to managers concerning when business-to-business (B2B) brand investments are likely to offer their greatest return.     

Relational and transactional factors as hybrid criteria for buyer project selection (BPS): An exploratory study from industrial suppliers' perspective

Working off the literature in selection studies, evolving from supplier selection, to buyer selection, to selection as transaction embedded in relationality, this study asks how industrial suppliers actually engage in buyer project selection (abbreviated as “BPS”). Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were used to construct and pilot-test a new BPS instrument among electronics executives in Taiwan. A mail survey using the new BPS instrument subsequently resulted in three significant research findings. First, the five BPS factors uncovered a hybridity thesis: factors from the transactional paradigm and the relational paradigm co-existed side by side. Second, even though suppliers engaged in project selection, the majority of the respondents' firms lacked clearly articulated formal BPS criteria. Third, relational satisfaction, more than perceived power, significantly impacted project selection; and project economic contribution, more than the other four BPS factors, played a substantive role in assessing relationality. Our research hopefully will help practitioners to recognize the need of BPS formalization, making a rich literature related to the co-existence/hybridity of transactional and relational approaches in project marketing and management relevant to Taiwan, China and the broader Asian business world in the future.     

Effects of collaborative communication on the development of market-relating capabilities and relational performance metrics in industrial markets

Research in marketing suggests that collaborative communication is important for firms to sustain competitive advantage, especially in industrial markets. This study integrates relational and resource-based views to articulate how collaborative communication influences different relational performance metrics. Based on a survey of 167 marketing executives in Taiwan's electronics industry, empirical findings indicate that market-relating capabilities (i.e., market-linking and marketing capabilities) completely mediate the collaborative communication–financial performance relationship, while market-relating capabilities partially mediate the collaborative communication–customer-focused performance relationship. In addition, collaborative communication directly influences customer cooperation performance instead of indirectly affecting it through the development of market-relating capabilities. The results of this study provide new insights into the role of collaborative communication as well as important theoretical and managerial implications.     

Relational norms and collaborative activities: Roles in reducing opportunism in marketing channels

Reducing opportunism is a critical task to support channel performance and channel member satisfaction. Recent research into marketing channels focuses on the role of relational governance in curbing opportunism; this study advances this thesis by positing that relational governance encompasses both relational norms and collaborative activities (i.e., joint planning and joint problem solving). In turn, the current research investigates how these two aspects of relational governance independently and jointly check opportunism in marketing channels. The tests of the hypotheses involve 149 Chinese manufacturer–distributor relationships. The results show that relational norms have a negative effect on opportunism, but the effect of collaborative activities is contingent on the level of consistency between the relational norms and collaborative activities that mark the relationship. A low level of relational norms prompts joint planning to inhibit opportunism and joint problem solving to exacerbate it. However, a high level of relational norms reverses these effects: Joint planning fosters opportunism, and joint problem solving curbs it. Thus collaborative activities have different properties that need to be devised in accordance with relational norms if the goal is to reduce opportunism.     

A relational embeddedness perspective on dynamic capabilities: A grounded investigation of buyer-supplier routines

Our study extends the emerging inter-firm-level theorization of dynamic capabilities by articulating how firms can develop and adapt their resource bases through supplier relations. Specifically, we aim to explore how different embedded relational aspects function together or separately to induce various inter-firm routines that presumably underpin the buying firm’s dynamic capabilities. The research design is a multiple case study involving 34 buyer-supplier dyad-level innovation events across six product groups of three multinational buying firms in the Pharmaceuticals, Aerospace, and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods sectors. Our inductive analysis suggests that the social, cognitive, and physical aspects of relational embeddedness play roles, in a cumulatively sequential fashion, in inducing three distinctive routine types—unilateral, quasi-unilateral, and bilateral—in the buyer-supplier dyads that underpin the three clusters of dynamic capabilities—sensing, seizing, and transforming, respectively. Furthermore, our study identifies two contingencies that explain variances in the observations and inferences. We therefore investigate the ‘black box’ of dynamic capabilities in inter-firm contexts, elucidating the roles and association of relational embeddedness and patterned activities (routines) in these relationships.     

Assessing the relational benefits of logistics services perceived by manufacturers in supply chain

The growing importance of logistics activities that span the boundaries of supply chain firms has put an emphasis on supply chain relationship management. Based on the existing marketing concept on relational benefits and the supply chain management literature on consumer satisfaction, this research evaluates logistics service performance from the eyes of manufacturers. Using data collected from US manufacturing firms, the study has identified the factors that influence manufacturer's satisfaction, as well as the key to understanding the benefits-satisfaction-loyalty triads in supply chain relationships. The contribution of the paper includes developing a conceptual model, adding new theoretical insights into benefits-satisfaction-loyalty triad that has been applied by manufacturers and LSPs, and providing some meaningful perspective on how to strategically assess the use of logistics providers so as to transform a logistics firm from a tactical service provider to a hand-in-glove strategic partner.     

Outsourcers’ control mechanisms,vendors’ contract schemas,and project performance in cross-border IT outsourcing: A vendor’s perspective

Relational conflicts are likely to occur in cross-border IT outsourcing between partners with different cultural backgrounds. Extant literature diverges on the role of contract and trust as control mechanisms in managing relational conflicts. Prior studies have examined the effectiveness of the control mechanisms primarily from the outsourcer’s perspective, with little consideration of how vendors interpret outsourcers’ control mechanisms. Based on psychological contract theory, this study addresses the effects of contract-based and trust-based control mechanisms on relational conflicts from the vendor’s perspective and further explores the contingency of the effects on vendors’ psychological contract schemas (transactional contract schema and relational contract schema) towards their relationships with outsourcers. Based on survey data from 180 offshore outsourcing IT projects, the results show that vendors’ transactional contract schema reduces the effect of trust-based control whereas vendors’ relational contract schema strengthens the effect of outsourcers’ contract-based control on relational conflict. Relational conflicts, in turn, exhibit a negative impact on project performance. The findings offer new insights into the role of outsourcers’ contract-based control and trust-based controls in relationship management from a vender’s perspective. The findings also extend the outsourcing governance literature by illustrating the contingency of the control mechanisms on vendors’ psychological contract schemas.     

Manufacturer-supplier relationships: An empirical test of a model of buyer outcomes

Relational buyer-seller exchanges have been the focus of significant research in the past few years. In extending this recent research, the authors draw upon transaction cost analysis and symbolic interactionism to propose and test a model focusing on outcomes of manufacturer-supplier relationships from the perspective of the manufacturer. Data from 157 purchasing executives offer empirical support for the relationships proposed in the model. In the context of acquiring critical items, relational orientation is found to be negatively related to measures of acquisition and possession costs and positively related to perceived product quality, and these variables, in turn, are significantly linked to the buyer's satisfaction with the supplier. Model results also indicate that a relational orientation has both a direct and an indirect link to satisfaction. Implications for both marketing managers and researchers interested in collaborative relationships between buyer and supplier organizations are offered.     

Collaborative buyer-supplier relationships and downstream information in marketing channels

Research on buyer-supplier relationships has emphasized the importance of collaboration and business networks. We aim to study the effects of downstream information on the collaborative buyer-supplier relationship. Downstream information refers to the information a firm obtains from marketing channels, be they wholesalers, distributors or retailers. The approach allows firms to concentrate their efforts on the most relevant sources of information and not on the whole network. Survey data was gathered from the Dutch potted plant and flower industry to test this hypothesis. Our findings demonstrate that collaborative relationships are contingent on downstream information from both the buying perspective (wholesalers) and from the supplying perspective (producers).     

Effective implementation of relationship orientation in new product launches

The critical role of relationships in business performance is widely recognized in the business marketing literature. However, to date, the prevailing new product launch research has concentrated on firms' general customer and competitor focus on predicting launch performance, and mainly applied a product centered or marketing mix perspective on considering effective strategic and tactical launch activities. Consequently, there is only scant knowledge on the relevance of a relational perspective when launching new products. The study contributes to this gap by examining the impact of firms' relationship orientation on launch performance and the key activities through which it is transformed into performance in the new product launch context. A set of hypotheses is developed and tested with data collected from 109 new product launches in pharmaceutical companies. The results show that sales force management and relationship leveraging mediate relationship orientation's impact on launch performance through complexly intertwined relationships. From a theoretical perspective, this study highlights the role of the relational perspective in new product launch and fosters our understanding on how relationship-focused culture is effectively implemented in practice. From a managerial perspective, the results offer insights on how firms can effectively enhance the successful commercialization of new products through relationship-oriented sales and marketing activities.     

Mature relationships: Why does relational orientation turn into transaction orientation?

One of the fundamental assumptions of relationship marketing is that the length of the relationship increases the relational orientation of the partners. Recently, however, researchers have suggested that the benefits of relationship marketing are not evident in a large number of industries [e.g., Journal of Marketing 64 (2000, October) 17]. In this paper, we examine these contradictory results and, using extant research in this area, we model the antecedents of mature relationships that lead to relational versus transactional orientation. Most buyer seller associations follow an s-shaped curve between partners' length of association and the relational orientation of the buyer. However, for some buyer-seller associations, we suggest that there is an inverted u-shaped relationship between relational orientation and length of association. We examine relational attributes and propose variables that are the antecedents of transactional orientation in mature relationships. Implications for theory and managerial practice are highlighted.     

Leadership, the buying center, and supply chain performance: A study of linked users, buyers, and suppliers

With conceptual foundations taken from leadership theory and the resource-based view (RBV), this study examines the influence of transactional and transformational leadership on the relationship between the value of the corporate buying center and performance in supply chains. The sample consists of 58 directly linked and matched supply chains, each composed of one user (internal customer), one corporate buyer, and one external supplier. The results indicate that transformational leadership has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the value of the corporate buying center and performance, while transactional leadership negatively moderates this relationship. Two “localness” dimensions (formalization and centralization) and two “openness” dimensions (participative and reflective) were included as controls in the analysis.     

The impact of supplier development on buyer competitive advantage: A path analytic model

As manufacturing firms increasingly realize that supplier performance is crucial to their establishing and maintaining competitive advantage, supplier development has been a subject of considerable research in supply chain management. We develop and test a path model to explore how supplier development practices affect buyer-supplier performance from the buying firm's perspective in the context of Hong Kong's electronics industry. The results show that top management, supplier evaluation, and supplier strategic objectives are significant determinants of transaction-specific supplier development, and that buyers that have closer collaborative relationships with suppliers may strengthen their competitive advantage.     

The relationships among leadership,goal orientation,and service quality in high-contact service industries: An empirical study

High-contact service industries are characterized by close interaction between service employees and customers, and diverse customer needs. Such characteristics pose a great challenge to the delivery of services of superior quality. In this research we conceptually explore and empirically examine several attitudinal and motivational factors of customer-contact employees, and the management style of managers as antecedents to service quality in high-contact service sectors. Based on dyadic data collected from 230 service firms in Hong Kong, we examine the relationships among transformational leadership, transactional leadership, affective organizational commitment, learning goal orientation, performance goal orientation, and service quality. We find that learning goal orientation is more effective than performance goal orientation in fostering service quality in the high-contact service context. We also observe that transformational leadership tends to be more effective than transactional leadership in influencing employee attitude in high-contact service firms. This research pioneers theory-driven examination of service quality in high-contact service firms using data collected from service employees and shop managers for hypothesis testing.