پارادایم چینی روابط تامین کننده کلی: کنترل اجتماعی، تعاملات رسمی و نقش واسطه فرهنگ

This paper reports the results of a study that examined how firms can establish successful business relationships with Chinese suppliers. Its aim is to explore salient characteristics of the nature of buyer supplier relationships with the emergence of China as a dominant economic power. Two surveys have been conducted that investigated several factors that inhibit and enable effective supplier relationship management (SRM) between organisations sourcing from China and Chinese suppliers, and explored the impact of cultural characteristics of Chinese management on the nature and performance of supplier relationships. The research highlights the importance of the social control aspect of governance structure of supplier relationships and stresses that both social and formal control mechanisms should be implemented for more effective relationships with Chinese suppliers. It also demonstrates the need for companies to recognise the importance of guanxi and several cultural characteristics of the Chinese style of management in SRM and advocates the need for the development of a hybrid Sino-Japanese and global supplier relationship management paradigm that incorporates elements from the existing SRM models. It generates insights into how the cultural context of emerging markets affects the nature of business relationships and generates a research agenda in the field of supply chain management that can explore the development of new paradigms in supplier relationships management. The main theoretical argument put forward centres on the need for the development of a new global supplier relationship management paradigm that will take into account the cultural elements of the Chinese society.

Over the past two decades, there has been a widespread trend amongst western countries to outsource some of their production and supporting services to low cost countries. The astonishing expansion of the Chinese economy has prompted many western organisations to outsource production of components, manufacturing processes and a number of business services (such as I.T. services and facilities management) to companies in the People's Republic of China (for brevity China will be used hereafter). Poor quality of locally produced components, particularly among second tier suppliers, as well as delivery delays and relatively high costs, represent major challenges of outsourcing in China. A number of recent studies emphasise these problems of outsourcing to China (Millington, Eberhardt, & Wilkinson, 2006) and the need for appropriate sourcing strategies and technical support to Chinese suppliers for the development of successful and sustainable supplier relationships (Gabriela and Douglas, 2006, Kaufmann and Hedderich, 2005, Kotabe and Zhao, 2002 and Lihong and Goffin, 2001). However, there have been relatively few studies that explore the peculiarities of supplier relationship management (SRM) with Chinese suppliers, especially in the interior of the country where foreign investment has not been so prevalent. The majority of current supplier relationship management models are either developed in the context of western or Japanese business cultures, or without sufficiently addressing cross-cultural issues. This paper explores how specific characteristics of Chinese culture (as they are manifest in business contexts) can affect the business relationships that multi-national firms have with their suppliers in China. The paper's primary objectives are the following: • to identify and analyse factors that inhibit or facilitate the sourcing processes with indigenous Chinese firms, the predominant type of governance structure of the supplier relationships and the interaction patterns between the trading partners; • to explore the effect of specific Chinese cultural characteristics on the nature of supplier relationship management of western multinational with local Chinese companies. The ultimate aim of this paper is to develop a research agenda to investigate the development of a hybrid global SRM paradigm that will take into account the existing SRM models as well as the cultural and contextual characteristics of China. Furthermore, the findings will inform western firms about the applicability of the current SRM models in their dealings with Chinese suppliers. With these aims in mind we have developed two principal research questions: RQ1: What factors facilitate or inhibit the nature of business relationships between Chinese companies and their international partners? RQ2: How do Chinese business cultural characteristics affect the business relationships between Chinese companies and their international partners? The remainder of the paper is organised in five sections. In section one the literature relating to the different philosophies is briefly explored and models for the management of supplier relationships and recent studies that provide insights on SRM between western companies and Chinese supplier are presented. In section two the peculiarities of Chinese business culture are discussed, and in section three the research design and data collection process is outlined. Section four presents the findings of the study. In the fifth section the findings and their implications for the development of a contemporary SRM model that takes into account Chinese cultural characteristics, are discussed. The paper concludes with the limitations of the study and its implications for business practice and for further research.

In line with the existing literature, the research highlights the importance of the social control side of governance structure and stresses that both social and formal control mechanisms should be implemented for more effectively liaising with Chinese suppliers. It also demonstrates that western companies need to recognise the importance of guanxi in Chinese culture; this may enable international buying companies to gain a competitive advantage in attracting the best Chinese suppliers. In addition, the results also state that the formal interaction pattern is still seen as the major method when interacting with the Chinese suppliers; this is different from the documented background research reading, which states that Chinese people are more focused on adopting informal methods when doing business. The study has several limitations that need to be addressed in future endeavours. First it investigates only a small number of factors that determine the nature of supplier relationships. Future research may investigate how structural issues such as power balance, and infrastructural issues such as quality control are manifested in the Chinese supplier relationship management paradigm. Future research may also look at how cultural elements of other emerging economies (such as India, Russia and Brazil) may affect the development of a new global supplier relationships management model. Methodologically the study is limited by the one-sided responses of either buyers or suppliers (mainly due to lack of resources). It would have been interesting to conduct in depth analysis of particular business relationships to investigate in detail the interaction pattern between the trading partners. It would have been interesting as well to conduct a study and revisit the business relationships in Japan to identify potential deviations of the original Japanese paradigm for supplier relations. As the Chinese economy and society is experiencing a rapid transformation, the contractual regime and as a consequence the nature of the business relationships will change, especially through the incorporation of legal clauses for more sustainable and socially responsible. This provides another opportunity to for another study that will investigate this transition and its impact on other Asian emerging markets.