ترل رسمی و غیر رسمی کنترل اجتماعی در روابط داخلی و بین المللی خریدار - تامین کننده

Focusing on long-term buyer–supplier relationships, this article addresses two questions: (1) What are the antecedents that lead to the adoption of formal control, social control, or both? (2) What is the nature of the relationship between formal control and social control - are they substitutes or complements? We develop a model to investigate the impact of the length of cooperation and institutionalization on the use of control mechanisms. Further, we argue that in China, formal control and social control may be substitutes in domestic buyer–supplier relationships, but they may be complements in international relationships. Survey data collected nationwide with executives in 380 domestic and 200 international buyer–supplier relationships in China are used to test our hypotheses.

As trade barriers have been reduced and IT and logistics technologies have improved, buyer–supplier relationships increasingly involve not only domestic partners but also international partners (Joshi, 2009 and Kaufmann and Carter, 2006). Many firms in developed countries establish buyer–supplier relationships with firms from emerging economies such as China. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce (2007), U.S. automakers imported $ 8.5 billion worth of Chinese automotive parts in 2007, making China the fourth largest source of auto parts after Mexico, Canada, and Japan. How to effectively manage domestic and international buyer–supplier relationships thus represents a major challenge for many firms. Control mechanisms in interfirm cooperation – structural arrangements deployed to regulate partners’ behavior – greatly influence the success of buyer–supplier relationships (Fryxell et al., 2002). Choosing effective control mechanisms is a must when managing these interorganizational relationships (Jap and Ganesan, 2000). There are two broad categories of control mechanisms: (1) formal control (which primarily relies on contracts) and (2) social control (which primarily relies on informal means) (Dyer and Singh, 1998 and Uzzi, 1997). The existing literature has focused on two crucial questions: (1) What are the antecedents that lead to the adoption of formal control, social control, or both in domestic and international buyer–supplier relationships? (2) What is the nature of the relationship between formal control and social control in explaining cooperation performance - are they substitutes or complements? Addressing the first question, the existing literature has generally adopted transaction cost economics (TCE) as its underlying paradigm (Williamson, 1985 and Wuyts and Geyskens, 2005). This is mainly because TCE focuses on the make-or-buy decision, which is crucial in buyer–supplier relationships (Williamson, 2008). Researchers in this stream assume that minimizing transaction costs is the fundamental driver for firms to adopt various control mechanisms in interfirm exchanges (Poppo and Zenger, 2002). Thus, several transaction cost factors have been identified as antecedents of control mechanisms, including asset specificity, environmental uncertainty, and behavioral uncertainty (Beckman et al., 2004, Ghosh and George, 2005, Poppo and Zenger, 2002, Reuer and Ariño, 2007 and Rindfleisch and Heide, 1997). Despite the significant insights generated by TCE-based research, findings have been inconsistent. For example, Joshi and Campbell (2003) and Poppo and Zenger (2002) report contrasting findings on the relationship between environment dynamism and social control. These inconsistent findings lead Madhok (2002) and White and Lui (2005) to suggest that TCE may be relatively narrow to adequately account for how firms choose formal or social control in interfirm relationships. According to Zhou et al. (2003), three logics underlie the behaviors of firms in economic exchanges: (1) transactions costs, (2) social relations, and (3) institutional constraints. Thus, in addition to TCE, social network theory and institutional view may also provide helpful insights on the adoption of control mechanisms in interfirm exchanges (Lin et al., 2009). Empirically, most existing research has focused on firms in developed economies. As our research horizon now increasingly expands to Asian countries such as China, India, and Korea (Jiang et al., 2007 and Zhao et al., 2007), it is unclear whether the same sets of antecedents apply to control mechanisms in these new settings. In this article, we invoke social network theory and institutional view to develop a model to suggest that in China, (1) the length of time that two firms have been involved in a buyer–supplier relationship – which we refer to as “the length of cooperation” – and (2) institutionalization of interfirm beliefs and values in the cooperative process may significantly shape the use of control mechanisms. With respect to the second question, some authors argue that formal control and social control mechanisms are substitutes (Dyer and Singh, 1998, Ghoshal and Moran, 1996, Gulati, 1995 and Uzzi, 1997). However, others suggest that formal and social control mechanisms are complementary in explaining cooperation performance (Luo, 2002, Mesquita and Brush, 2008, Poppo and Zenger, 2002 and Wuyts and Geyskens, 2005). These conflicting views, thus, necessitate further investigation. We posit that the type of cooperation – domestic versus international – would influence this relationship. For example, Poppo and Zenger (2002: 722), who study domestic firms in the United States, speculate that “our notion of complements is not likely to generalize to countries that lack a cultural and legal commitment to the use of formal contracts.” However, in China, a country widely believed to be lacking in legal commitment to the use of formal contracts (Peng and Heath, 1996), Luo (2002) reports that some of the Poppo and Zenger (2002) findings on the complementary nature of formal control and social control can also be generalized to a sample of international joint ventures (IJVs). Specifically, Luo (2002) finds that term specificity and contingency adaptability of formal contract between partners interact positively with social control in explaining IJV performance. Extending this line of research, we argue that in China, the relationship between formal control and social control in domestic and international relationships may be different. Specifically, formal control and social control may function as substitutes in domestic relationships, and as complements in international relationships. Following Li et al. (2008), we suggest that the underlying causes of these differences stem from the different traditions and norms governing domestic and international buyer–supplier relationships in China. Theoretically, this article provides a more nuanced and in-depth understanding of the two questions on the antecedents and nature of control mechanisms. Empirically, we focus on an important form of interfirm cooperation - long-term buyer–supplier relationships (hereafter referred to as “buyer–supplier relationships” for composition simplicity). This article draws on survey data collected from 380 domestic and 200 international buyer–supplier relationships in China. Most existing work has focused either on domestic or international buyer–supplier relationships. Rarely have scholars systematically compared the differences between these two different relationships (Kaufmann and Carter, 2006). This comprehensive sample thus enables us to test hypotheses that formal and social control may be substitutes in domestic buyer–supplier relationships and complements in international relationships.

This article has examined the antecedents and nature of formal and social control mechanisms in both domestic and international buyer–supplier relationships in China. With reliable and robust survey evidence collected nationwide with executives involved in 580 buyer–supplier relationships, we find that the length of cooperation and institutionalization are important determinants of the use of control mechanisms in both domestic and international buyer–supplier cooperation. However, the length of cooperation exerts different influences on the use of control mechanisms in domestic and international buyer–supplier relationships. In contrast, institutionalization facilitates both the use of social and formal control in domestic and international buyer–supplier relationships in China. In addition, while formal control and social control substitute each other in domestic relationships, formal and social control mechanisms function neither as pure complements nor as substitutes in buyer–supplier relationships involving Chinese and foreign firms. In conclusion, not only the antecedents such as the length of cooperation and institutionalization have differentiated impacts on the choice of control mechanisms in domestic and international buyer–supplier relationships, but the nature of the relationship between formal and social control also differs significantly.