تاثیر توسعه تامین کننده بر روی مزیت رقابتی خریدار : مدل مسیر تحلیلی

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.

Today's manufacturers tend to develop closer ties with their suppliers because cooperative buyer–supplier relationships are linked to significantly reduced cost, shorter lead-time, increased productivity, and enhanced quality (Dyer, 1997, Li et al., 2006 and Ou et al., 2010). Supplier development is a kind of cooperation between a buyer and a supplier to seek continuous improvement in supplier performance and, at the same time, strengthen the buyer's competitive advantage (Hahn et al., 1990, Krause, 1997, Krause, 1999, Vickery et al., 2003 and Wagner, 2011). 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 (SCM) (Giunipero, 1990, Monczka et al., 1993, Hartley and Choi, 1996, Goffin et al., 2006 and Govindan et al., 2010). Although previous research on supplier development has provided good insights into the use of certain supplier development activities, the antecedents, and the influencing factors (Lascelles and Dale, 1989, Hahn et al., 1990, Galt and Dale, 1991, Monczka et al., 1993, Watts and Hahn, 1993, Krause, 1997, Krause, 1999, Krause and Ellram, 1997a, Krause and Ellram, 1997b, Krause et al., 2000 and Yeung et al., 2005), much of the literature has been descriptive and case-based, with a primary focus on establishing supplier development programmes, investigating the characteristics and benefits of the programmes, and exploring the management of the programmes. In view of a growing consensus that direct supplier development plays a critical role in driving performance improvement and contributes strategically to overall organizational effectiveness (Leenders and Blenkhorn, 1988, Hahn et al., 1990, Monczka et al., 1993, Hartley and Choi, 1996, Krause, 1997 and Chen et al., 2004), several studies have empirically examined the impact of supplier development programmes on performance. Krause et al. (2000) report that direct involvement in supplier development activities plays an important role in supplier performance improvement. Li et al. (2003) and Humphreys et al. (2004) use regression analysis to examine the relationships between supplier development activities and both supplier performance and buyer competitive advantage improvement. Although there many studies on supplier development, there has been no research proposing and testing a large and comprehensive model that portrays the interrelationships among the antecedents, supplier development activities, and buyer–supplier performance outcomes. In addition, all the previous research is conducted in the context of western countries. We fill the above research gaps by conducting an empirical study that investigates the existing supplier development activities being undertaken by buying firms in the electronics industry of Hong Kong. We develop and test a path model that portrays the interrelationships among supplier development, its influencing factors, and buyer–supplier performance outcomes from the buying firm's perspective. The results of this research provide a better understanding of how antecedents and supplier development activities influence the success of supplier development programmes in the context of the Chinese business environment.

We develop in this research a model to explain how supplier development leads to buyer competitive advantage and to identify the determinants of transaction-specific supplier development. Through analysis of path coefficients and elimination of weak paths, we refine the original model to a trimmed model that reflects the relationships between supplier development activities and performance. Not surprisingly, we find that top management support is critical to both influencing factors and transaction-specific supplier development. This demonstrates the idea that supplier development is a specific function that pervades the entire organization, rather than the responsibility of a few isolated individuals or just the purchasing department. Without strong top management support, supplier development could be ineffective. Moreover, we find that supplier evaluation and supplier strategic objectives are direct and significant determinants of transaction-specific supplier development. This result suggests that buyers would be more likely to initiate transaction-specific supplier development by attaching more importance to supplier evaluation and supplier strategic objectives. Furthermore, it suggests that buyers that have closer collaborative relationships with suppliers may actually strengthen their competitive advantages. This study is an exploratory one with a small sample size of only 142 electronics manufacturing firms, which might yield less reliable results. Further research is needed to corroborate these findings with larger and more representative samples. Moreover, future studies should consider more factors such as the purchase amounts, the number of suppliers the manufacturing firms deal with, and the type of manufacturing firms (i.e., OEM), which could provide a more meaningful background to supplier development activities. Also, the measurements of the supplier's strategic objectives and the supplier's performance improvement are both reported by buyers. Therefore, future work reporting on the views of suppliers is required in order to improve data reliability. This will also provide a better understanding of the nature of supplier development from the vendor's perspective. In addition, although focusing on one industry can control extraneous variation and create more accurate, context-specific measures, future research could establish the nature of supplier development activities in other industrial settings, particularly those areas that are important to the economic development of Hong Kong. This will provide a better understanding of how the variables that influence supplier development involvement and how buyer–supplier performance is affected in different industry contexts. Although conducted in the context of the electronics industry of Hong Kong, our study could provide insights or challenges from both practical and research perspectives. Manufacturing firms are facing domestic and foreign competition at greater levels than in the past. Firms that excel must implement strategies to achieve cost reduction, continual quality improvement, increased customer service, delivery improvement, and reduced concept-to-market product cycle time. Supplier development is seen as one of the key strategies crucial to achieving these goals. Given the significance of supplier development programmes, the current research could provide an insightful understanding of the influencing factors, current practices, essence, and outcomes associated with developing suppliers from a global manufacturing perspective.