اثر عوامل رابطه ای بر حسابداری کتاب باز و مدیریت هزینه درون سازمانی در مشارکت های خریدار ـ عرضه کننده

Open-book accounting (OBA) – the systematic disclosure and discussion of cost data between partner firms – is indispensable for revealing additional cost reduction opportunities that become feasible through the joint efforts of different organizations within supplier–buyer partnerships (inter-organizational cost management). However, evidence from previous case studies indicates that the adoption of OBA and inter-organizational cost management (IOCM) depends on the relational context. This study hypothesizes that the relational factors trust and commitment influence the implementation of OBA and IOCM. The results of a structural equation model used to evaluate data from 147 automotive suppliers partly support this hypothesis. While supplier's commitment promotes cost data disclosure, the buyer's commitment is a key enabler for the inter-organizational cost management.

The efficient management of supply partnerships has become of primary importance for manufacturing organizations to gain a competitive advantage in today's fast changing business environment. In order to ensure the competitiveness of the organization and to increase operational flexibility, organizations increasingly focus on their core competencies and outsource a high percentage of the products' value-added (Prahalad and Hamel, 1990 and Quinn, 2000). However, Cooper and Slagmulder (1999) note that “…when a high percentage of the value-added of products is outsourced it is not sufficient to be the most efficient firm; rather it is necessary to be part of the most efficient supplier network” (p. 11). Competition is no longer only between firms but rather between supply networks (Trent, 2004). Consequently, the scope of cost management has been widened beyond the boundaries of the single firm (Cooper and Slagmulder, 1999, Kulmala et al., 2002 and Slagmulder, 2002). The traditional independent cost management by the individual firms of the network itself – however effective – is no longer sufficient to maintain competitiveness. To achieve additional cost savings, buyers and suppliers need to introduce an inter-organizational cost management (hereafter IOCM), i.e. cost savings through the coordinated actions of buyers and suppliers (Cooper and Slagmulder, 1999). To effectively manage costs, i.e. to purposefully influence costs covering all activities that improve the efficiency of the firm (Kajueter, 2002 and Kotzab and Teller, 2002), the cost elements of a product need to be known, including the suppliers' costs (Kulmala, 2002). However, firms usually only know their own internal costs and purchase prices due to the lack of transparency regarding cost accumulation within supply networks. This makes IOCM practices difficult (Kulmala, 2002). Therefore, the practice of open-book accounting (hereafter OBA), which demands the disclosure of cost information to the partner firm (Kulmala, 2002 and Kulmala, 2004), is considered essential to reveal additional opportunities for cost savings through introducing IOCM (Kajueter and Kulmala, 2005 and Kulmala et al., 2002). Research addressing OBA and IOCM suggests that the relational context of the buyer–supplier partnership influences the adoption of both cost data disclosure and joint cost management practices (Cooper and Slagmulder, 2004 and Kajueter and Kulmala, 2005). However, evidence in this respect is limited to case study-based research. Using structural equation modeling, we contribute to the literature by examining the key factors influencing the implementation of OBA and IOCM based on cross-sectional survey data from 147 first- and second-tier automotive suppliers. Our aim is to further enhance the understanding of the potential prerequisites of and obstacles to OBA and IOCM. The analysis is based on transaction cost theory, while its focus is widened by including additional relational factors in the analysis. The remainder of the paper consists of a review of the relevant literature on OBA and IOCM, followed by the description of the research framework, the identification and definition of the relevant factors, and the development of the hypotheses to be tested on the survey data. Subsequently, the method used to conduct the study is presented. The paper concludes with a discussion of the results followed by the conclusion.

The primary theoretical contribution of this study lies in the identification and empirical confirmation of relational factors' relevance for the implementation of OBA and IOCM. Previous research suggests that both the implementation of OBA and IOCM are influenced by relational factors. This study confirms this regarding buyers and suppliers' commitment. Specifically, the findings imply that the suppliers' commitment is a key enabler for cost data disclosure. Buyers should, therefore, foster the suppliers' commitment whenever applicable. An effective way for doing so would be for example to determine long-running development requirements, which require high relationship-specific investments by the supplier. The results further indicate that buyers need to establish a credible commitment to the relationship for implementing IOCM. Joint cost management efforts of buyer and supplier often pay off in a long-term perspective. Thus, the buyer needs to credibly signal his intention for the continuity of the relationship in the long run when intending to implement IOCM. Additionally, the results verify the importance of OBA for the application of the latter. Future research on cost data disclosure and inter-organizational cost management practices should therefore take into account the relational context. Finally, the results indicate that the relationship between OBA, IOCM and trust is much more complex than previously assumed. Consequently, it is important to further investigate the effect of trust and other relationship aspects on the inter-organizational exchange of (cost) information. Our results indicate that findings from previous research concerning information exchange cannot be applied directly to the exchange of sensitive information such as OBA. It appears necessary to clearly differentiate between cost data disclosure and the exchange of other, less sensitive information due to the inherent risk of data disclosure. Unfortunately, previous research mostly neglected this aspect. The extent and quality of information disclosure and joint cost management practices should be further investigated. A general categorization of information characteristics that determine the risk of information disclosure might be a first step to identify key drivers for the disclosure of information. The inherent risk of the disclosure of cost related information might for example vary dependent on how detailed the provided information is, to which degree a direct connection to supplier's prices exist and how fast the opportunistic value of shared information erode. In other words, suppliers face a much lower risk if the disclosed information contains only a separated cost area and the information becomes obsolete quickly than if the provided information enables the buyer to calculate suppliers' costs levels over an extended period of time. Another risk-related information characteristic might be the degree to which buyers can derive supplier's core competencies and core processes. Furthermore, the buyer's intended use of the disclosed information should be included in the analysis as well as the supplier's perception. This analysis is subject to the usual limitations associated with the survey format and the use of structural equation modeling as a research method. As with all cross-sectional studies, the direction of causalities has to be confirmed by using commonly acknowledged results from theory and prior studies. Nevertheless, due to the applied study setting, a residual potential for reverse causality, in which cost data disclosure for example influences the level of supplier commitment, cannot be discounted. While results from previous research support the assumed causality underlying the research model (e.g. Kajueter and Kulmala, 2005 and Kulmala, 2004), future research could add value by employing a longitudinal research design. Furthermore, data was only collected from suppliers. Future research could cross-validate the findings of this study with data from the buyer side. This would also be useful to generate additional insights into the interactions between buyers and suppliers within supply partnerships. The sample size of n=147 is at the lower limit of acceptability for structural equation modeling. Hair et al. (2006) for example argue that SEM models containing five or fewer constructs can be adequately estimated with sample sizes of 100–150. However, they recommend a sample size of 200 if constructs with fewer than three items are included in the model. Consequently, even though the sample does comprise more than one fifth of the researched population of Germany's automotive suppliers, future research should validate the findings of this study based on larger sample sizes. While the survey only included German automotive suppliers, the automotive industry itself is highly globalized and German suppliers supply international OEMs as well as German OEMs. The findings should, therefore, be also to some degree representative for the global automotive industry. Nevertheless, there may be some restrictions when generalizing the findings as the relationship between OEM and supplier may differ considerably between first and/or second-tier and third-tier suppliers (Cooper and Slagmulder, 2004). Furthermore, the generalization of the conclusion should be undertaken with care as the findings are likely to be dependent on the setup of the industry, especially with regard to findings on the relationship context (Cooper and Slagmulder, 1999). While the automotive industry is highly competitive, it is also dominated by a small number of OEMs operating worldwide. Whether our findings may be generalized to industries with different setups remains yet to be tested.