تاثیر روابط خریدار تامین کننده در تامین کننده نوآوری: یک مطالعه تجربی در شبکه های فرامرزی

Drawing on organizational learning and the relational view of the firm, this study seeks to understand the factors that drive supplier innovativeness in the context of cross-border supply relationships. To address this research objective, a survey included 189 parts and components manufacturers (suppliers) in Turkey; hierarchical regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses. The findings demonstrate that interfirm knowledge sharing routines, relation-specific investments, and governance mechanisms may promote supplier innovativeness by expanding the supplier's knowledge resources and encouraging it to invest in innovative activities. In addition, this research emphasizes differentiating effects of the supplier's tier position for the impacts of buyer assistance and cooperative tie. As such, this study contributes to the purchasing and supply management literature by empirically showing how buyer–supplier relationships, particularly in cross-border supply networks, affect supplier innovativeness.

In recent decades, evidence has shown convincingly that the innovative ability of suppliers is a key source of value for buying firms (Azadegan and Dooley, 2010, Liker and Choi, 2004 and Möller and Törrönen, 2003). Buying firms no longer rely exclusively on suppliers to maximize operational performance; they look for innovation potential among suppliers and try to leverage this potential to create value for their own customers (Kibbeling, 2010, Lorenzoni and Lipparini, 1999 and Quinn, 2000). In prior research that notes the role of supplier innovativeness for buying firms, Azadegan (2011) argues that innovative suppliers provide manufacturing firms with direct and indirect benefits. For example, innovativeness may allow a supplier to develop new ideas, processes, and technology that directly improve products delivered to the manufacturer; over time, the manufacturer can leverage the supplier's innovative abilities to extend its own capabilities indirectly. Azadegan and Dooley (2010) further argue that innovative suppliers respond more efficiently to buyers' demands and develop alternative solutions to business problems and challenges, which makes it essential for suppliers to undertake innovative activities to respond to the buying firm's cost, quality, flexibility, and product development requirements (Srinivasan & Brush, 2006). Despite its increasing importance though, supplier innovativeness is not sufficiently addressed by prior literature, especially with regard to the factors that enable supplier innovativeness in buyer–supplier relationships (Choi and Krause, 2006 and Kamath and Liker, 1990), leading scholars to call for more research in this area (e.g., Roy et al., 2004 and Schiele, 2006). The organizational view posits that a firm's innovativeness results from its efforts to respond to the internal and external environments or the firm's orientation toward the market and organizational learning (Hurley & Hult, 1998). However, other scholars highlight the role of interfirm relationships instead, particularly relationships with customers and suppliers. For example, a firm's innovativeness may be mainly the result of interactions between a buyer and a supplier (Håkansson, 1982, Håkansson and Eriksson, 1993 and Roy et al., 2004). Through its interactions, a supplier firm can activate its own resources and develop new capabilities (Ford et al., 1986 and Håkansson and Snehota, 1995). Teece, Pisano, and Shuen (1997) thus propose a “dynamic capabilities” approach to suggest that interfirm relationships provide more dynamic resources for the acquisition of new capabilities. According to this view, firms continuously upgrade their capabilities through learning, adaptation, and integration in an exchange relationship (Kogut and Zander, 1992, Lorenzoni and Lipparini, 1999 and McEvily and Marcus, 2005). Therefore, interfirm routines or mechanisms that promote suppliers' learning, adaptation, and integration may offer important opportunities for the suppliers to enhance their innovativeness. Researchers so far have studied the roles of several interfirm routines and governance mechanisms that buying firms use to upgrade suppliers' performance and capabilities. While buying firms reduce their supply base (Koufteros, Cheng, & Lai, 2007), they strive to develop remaining suppliers' capabilities through assistance-giving routines (Dyer and Hatch, 2006 and Dyer and Nobeoka, 2000), closely coordinate product development (Handfield et al., 1999, Takeishi, 2001 and Wagner and Hoegl, 2006), and establish close relational ties with their suppliers (Nyaga et al., 2010 and Shin et al., 2000). However, existing literature has not yet specified how these routines and mechanisms contribute to the innovative ability of a supplier. In addition, increasing competitive pressure has pushed Western companies to outsource production to suppliers in lower-cost countries, such as Eastern European nations, Turkey, India, China, or Brazil (Contractor et al., 2010 and Kotabe and Mudambi, 2009), though they still hope these suppliers facilitate their innovation practices (Jean, Sincovics, & Cavusgil, 2010). For example, in the automotive industry, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Toyota and Honda, believe that the innovation capabilities of their suppliers are more important than wage costs (Liker & Choi, 2004). Although the increased globalization of supply chains has created profound interfirm relationships across national borders, existing literature provides little evidence about how these relationships contribute to supplier innovativeness (Jean, Sincovics and Cavusgil, 2010). Moreover, most suppliers in low-cost countries tend to be small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (Wasti & Wasti, 2008), so they might lack the necessary resources and skills to demonstrate required innovative behaviors (Johnsen and Ford, 2006, Li et al., 2010 and Liker and Choi, 2004). Relationships with foreign buyers can provide suppliers with important opportunities to enhance their innovativeness by providing vital sources of knowledge (Dhanaraj et al., 2004 and Lane and Lubatkin, 1998) and making significant demands that create strong incentives for suppliers to invest in new assets and capabilities (Jean, Sincovics and Cavusgil, 2010). Finally, both industrial network theorists and supply chain management scholars organize vertical networks into multilevel tiers forming the supply chain network (Clark and Fujimoto, 1991, McIvor et al., 1998 and Möller and Rajala, 2007). In this structure, each network actor plays a different role, takes on fundamentally different responsibilities, and establishes different business relationships (Liker et al., 1996 and Möller and Halinen, 1999). Therefore, in a supply chain, a supplier's innovativeness may be partially contingent on its tier position (Liker et al., 1996, McDermott and Corredoira, 2010 and Wynstra et al., 2010). This study investigates how buyers' assistance-giving routines, joint product development arrangements, and cooperative ties with suppliers influence the supplier's innovativeness in cross-border supply relationships. We propose a contingency framework to address the role of tier position, which may moderate the links between our predictor variables and supplier innovativeness. To address these objectives, we conducted a survey with supplier firms in Turkey, including the parts and components manufacturers listed in the membership directory of the Uludag Exporters' Association (Turkey). In this sample, the sales ratio to foreign markets often reaches 50%, so it provides a good opportunity to examine supplier innovativeness in cross-border supply networks. As the theoretical foundation for our research, we seek insights from organizational learning theory (Kogut & Zander, 1992) and the relational view (Dyer & Singh, 1998), which state that interfirm linkages, including interfirm routines and governance mechanisms, provide important opportunities for exchange partners' learning, generation of new knowledge, and acquisition of new capabilities. We also gain insights from industrial network theory (Gadde et al., 2003 and Möller and Rajala, 2007) and power-dependence perspective (Gulati and Sytch, 2007, Heide and John, 1988 and Kumar et al., 1995b) highlighting the importance of network structure which may differentiate the behaviors of exchange partners. Our research contributes to purchasing and supply management literature in several ways. First, despite the increasing importance of supplier innovativeness for the success of supply chains, we lack understanding of the factors that drive supplier innovativeness in buyer–supplier relationships. This study enriches prior purchasing and supply management literature on buyer–supplier relationships by empirically showing how interfirm knowledge sharing routines, relation-specific investments, and governance mechanisms promote supplier innovativeness. Studying these phenomena in the context of cross-border buyer–supplier relationships adds additional value to the literature. Second, the current research emphasizes the role of tier position to differentiate the effects of buyer–supplier relationships on supplier innovativeness. Third, unlike previous studies, we take the suppliers' perspective, in response to extant calls (Carr et al., 2008 and Paulraj et al., 2008). Fourth, we believe that understanding how buyer–supplier relationships, particularly in cross-border supply networks, affect supplier innovativeness may help both buying and supplier firms' managers develop and pursue better strategies to create value in their supply chains. In the remainder of this article, we begin by reviewing the literature on which we base our conceptual model. After we develop the research hypotheses, we present the methodology and describe the study results. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings and the research directions they suggest.

With the increasing role of global suppliers in product development, supplier innovativeness, a key indicator of suppliers' value creation potential, might become even more important than wage costs. The aim of this study has been to investigate the effects of buyers' assistance giving routines, product development collaboration, and close relational ties on a supplier's innovativeness, in the context of cross-border buyer–supplier relationships. Using organizational learning and the relational view, we have developed and empirically tested a research model from the supplier's perspective, which demonstrated the drivers of supplier innovativeness in cross-border supply networks. In addition, by considering tiered structures in the supply chain, we have investigated whether the network structure or tier position of a supplier moderated the links between predictor variables and supplier innovativeness. This research has contributed to existing literature by providing both theoretical and managerial implications.