سابقه عملکرد کیفیت دوتایی و اثر آن بر بهبود ارتباط خریدار تامین کننده

This study develops and empirically tests a conceptual framework to investigate the antecedents of dyadic quality performance and its connection with buyer–supplier relationship (BSR) improvement. Drawing on the knowledge-based theory, we argue that BSR improvement is a consequence of dyadic quality performance in terms of mutual conformance to the quality requirements of the involved parties in a BSR. We also posit that information technology (IT) capability of firms, effective communication with suppliers, and customer knowledge management (KM) capability are determinants of dyadic quality performance. Path analysis performed on data collected from 137 of the top 500 manufacturers in China indicates that customer KM capability positively affects dyadic quality performance, which in turn is positively associated with BSR improvement. Implications and future research directions on BSR are discussed.

Dyadic quality performance refers to the quality conformance of the involved parties in a buyer–supplier relationship (BSR) meeting the mutually agreed upon quality requirements and expectations in their economic exchange ( Lai et al., 2005; Shin et al., 2000). It is concerned with the relationships of buyers and suppliers in providing quality products and services for their end customers ( Stanley and Wisner, 2001; Yadav and Goel, 2008). Conformance to the dyadic quality performance indicates the mutual willingness of the involved parties in a BSR to comply with the quality requirements specified in their economic exchange. Given the growing trend towards building and managing relationships among partner firms in a supply chain to deliver superior customer value at the lowest possible cost ( Christopher, 1998), quality practices and performance in a BSR has received increasing attention in the literature ( Fynes and de Burca, 2008; Lai et al., 2005; Mellat-Parast and Digman, 2008; Stanley and Wisner, 2001). The success of a BSR depends not only on the effective coordination of business activities between buyers and suppliers, but also their willingness to completely fulfill the quality requirements of each other to attain better performance in the BSR ( Fynes and Voss, 2002). Conformance to quality is essential for developing cooperation, whereas continuance of a BSR underpins the ability of buyers and suppliers to satisfy their mutually agreed upon quality requirements in the economic exchange relationship. Although quality management and its impact on business performance have been well-documented in the literature (e.g., Nair, 2006), the impact of quality conformance of buyers and suppliers on a BSR remains under-explored. Prior empirical studies were confined to conceptual development of quality management in a supply relationship as a management practice to ensure product/service quality with the presence of such factors as quality information, top management support, supplier and customer involvements, and so forth (Hendricks and Singhal, 1997; van der Vaart and van Donk, 2008). These studies failed to explicitly measure the quality conformance of the involved parties which is key to developing cooperation and continuance in a BSR (Molina et al., 2007). Although Lai et al. (2005) examined supplier commitment to the quality requirement of a focal firm from the perspective of transaction cost economics, study on mutual quality conformance in managing a BSR is lacking. The literature has generated insights on adopting IT and electronic linkages for managing a BSR (Lai et al., 2008), but they neglect to examine the importance of exploiting the information shared in a BSR to create customer values. The exploitation of information can be characterized by organizational capability to share, integrate, and create information and knowledge in a BSR for customer value creation (Sanders and Premus, 2005). Other than effective communication between partner firms, it is essential for firms to have IT capability as well as customer knowledge management (KM) capability to process information and generate knowledge to create customer values (Sanders and Premus, 2005; Tanriverdi, 2005). IT capability refers to the IT management practices that enable firms to deliver IT services. Such practices include information processing, systems development, and IT applications in support of organizational operations relating to decision making and process improvements ( Ravichandran and Lertwongsatien, 2005). The development of IT capability facilitates information processing and knowledge generation of firms. Customer KM capability is concerned with the organizational ability in managing knowledge about customers to better meet their needs. Information and KM capability are desirable elements for improving processes between partner firms, nurturing mutual understanding and expectations of the involved parties in the BSR ( Kelle et al., 2007; Lai et al., 2005; Sanders and Premus, 2005), which in turn would be valuable for enhancing their ability to attain quality conformance. The discussion above suggests a need for a systematic investigation on how firms improve BSR performance through effective management and utilization of information and knowledge. In particular, the antecedents of mutual support between buyers and suppliers in attaining dyadic quality performance and its implications on BSR improvement should be further explored. The objective of this study is to develop the theoretical underpinnings of this premise and empirically test a model that collectively considers information and KM capabilities of firms (i.e., IT capability, effective communication with supplier, customer KM capability, dyadic quality performance, and BSR improvement). Specifically, this study examines: (i) the impact of IT capability of firms, effective communication with suppliers, and customer KM capability on dyadic quality performance, and (ii) the association of dyadic quality performance with BSR improvement. This study contributes knowledge to the study on BSR in two ways. In contrast to prior studies that have implicitly assumed that IT capability of firms could directly affect BSR performance (e.g., Saeed et al., 2005), this study builds on the knowledge-based theory. We contribute to the literature with this theoretical perspective by an insight that, in addition to possessing IT capability, effective communication with suppliers for knowledge exchange and customer KM capability are also key to generating mutually beneficial dyadic relationships, where the involved parties of a BSR accommodate the quality requirements of each another (Tsiakis and Papageorgious, 2008). In addition, we extend the study of BSR from the economic and social perspectives, which mainly examine the cost (Cannon and Perreault, 1999) and social relationships (Granovetter, 1985), to KM perspective on the management of BSR. We examine the impact of attaining dyadic quality performance as the mutual willingness of the involved parties in a BSR to meet the quality requirements desired for their economic exchange and as the consequence of KM between partner firms for improving the BSR.

This study explored the effects of information and KM capabilities (i.e., IT capability, effective communication with supplier, and customer KM capability of firms), on dyadic quality performance, which in turn affects BSR improvement. Built on the knowledge-based theory, we argued that the information and KM capabilities of firms are determinants of dyadic quality performance, where partner firms are able to satisfy the quality requirements of their counterparts in the BSR for mutual benefits. We also argued that BSR improvement is determined by dyadic quality performance. Taken together, the results presented above provide partial support to our knowledge-based arguments and shed light on the importance of customer KM capability of firms and dyadic quality performance for BSR improvement. We extended the knowledge-based theory from the KM capability of firms to quality conformance by the involved parties in a BSR, which is found to be instrumental for improving BSR. Specifically, our findings suggest that customer KM capability, but not IT capability and effective communication with suppliers, is associated with dyadic quality performance. These counterintuitive findings suggest that information processing, knowledge processing, and information sharing capability of firms are not related to dyadic quality performance in BSR. The findings suggest that IT capability and effective communication with suppliers are not critical for firms to attain dyadic quality performance. It is the application of knowledge to meet customer needs (i.e., customer KM capability), that generates dyadic quality performance. The positive associations between customer KM capability and dyadic quality performance echo Kogut's (2000) argument that proper exploitation of knowledge amongst partner firms can encode coordination within and across firms in a specific, cooperative structure. Such a cooperative structure can be characterized by the quality conformance of partner firms for generating mutual benefits in a BSR. However, the IT capability and effective communication of firms mainly facilitate inter-organizational information sharing with their partner firms which may not necessarily generate knowledge which requires integration of information (Nonaka, 1994). Although IT capability and effective communication of firms provide a backbone for information sharing between firms, these two information and KM capabilities may not be helpful for a firm to generate the needed knowledge in meeting the quality requirements of partner firms (Alavi and Leidner, 2001). In other words, IT capability and effective communication of firms can facilitate the sharing of quality related information across partner firms, but they are insufficient to ensure the conformance of quality requirements in managing a BSR. In such case, it is useful for firms to listen to the voice of the partners and work closely together for better understanding and fulfillment of the quality requirements in the BSR. In terms of the consequences of dyadic quality performance, our results support the positive impact of dyadic quality performance on BSR improvement. Our study findings are consistent with the extant literature on BSR, that when firms are cooperative in meeting the needs of partner firms, which contributes to reduction of uncertainty in trade, BSR improvement is more likely to be induced (Cannon and Perreault, 1999; Lai et al., 2008; Mohr and Spekman, 1994). One of the limitations of this study is that the fit measures CFI=0.84 and IFI=0.85 are below the threshold value of 0.9 (Hair et al., 1998; Maruyama, 1998; Shah and Goldstein, 2005).