It is widely acknowledged that suppliers contribute positively to innovation in new product development. However, it remains rather unclear what suppliers actually contribute to innovation. Based on a literature review focusing on 80 articles, and a focus group meeting with strategic purchasing managers, a conceptual framework is developed categorizing different supplier inputs to innovation. T...

It is widely acknowledged that suppliers contribute positively to innovation in new product development. However, it remains rather unclear what suppliers actually contribute to innovation. Based on a literature review focusing on 80 articles, and a focus group meeting with strategic purchasing managers, a conceptual framework is developed categorizing different supplier inputs to innovation. T...

Postponement is an approach to reduce risk in new product development by delaying design decisions. Addressing the problem of elicitation and transferring customer needs, which proved to be sticky and difficult to transfer prior to product launch, this paper proposes to move the point of postponement into the customer domain. Products based on technologies such as embedded open toolkits enable ...

Since decisions concerning technology appraisal are of strategic importance to organizations, issues involved are complex and the nature of the decision is difficult to be captured and reused for future decisions in the changing technology selection environment. The proposed knowledge management framework addresses the technology selection and appraisal problem through an ontology-based approac...

University of Twente, Department of Operational Methods for Production and Logistics, Capitool 15, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, Netherlands, [email protected], tel.: +31 (0)53 489 4715; fax +31 (0)53 489 2159 University of Bath, Centre for Research in Strategic Purchasing and Supply, School of Management, Bath, BA2 7AY, United Kingdom, Elmer Bakker [email protected], Helen Wal...

We study how competitive pressure influences the make-or-buy decision that oligopolistic firms face between producing an intermediate component in-house or purchasing it from a domestic supplier. We model outsourcing as a bilateral relationship in which the supplier undertakes relationship-specific investments. A home and foreign firm compete in the home market. Firms’ mode of operation decisio...

Guanxi has been identified as having an important influence on business behavior. This paper investigates the influence of guanxi on three elements of supply chain management: strategic purchasing, outsourcing, and supplier development. Survey data was collected from 175 companies in the electronics sector of Hong Kong. The results indicate that guanxi has a significant influence on these three...

This paper offers a typology that distinguishes between three types of customersupplier relationships, namely asymmetrical customer-dominated and supplierdominated relationships and more symmetrical relationships. A conceptual framework that identifies strategic relationship alternatives for small and medium-sized firms in asymmetrical relationships is presented, and the type of knowledge, lear...

Purchasing and suppliers are of major strategic importance to most companies today. This is because a substantial amount of the resources used by a company are made available through its suppliers. Purchases from suppliers account for more than half of total costs for most companies and in some industries, such as electronics, telecommunications, construction, and automotive, this portion is no...

Value creation is considered as key to collaborative customer-supplier relationships. Despite the growing body of research, more knowledge is needed about the construct of relationship value and its operationalization. The present paper provides a definition of relationship value and develops a scale for measuring the concept in business-to-business markets. Findings from a cross-sectional surv...