A Study On Buyer-supplier Relationship Management:Supplier Selection,Governance And Information Sharing

With the development of the global society,economy and technology,the relationship between buyers and suppliers has changed deeply.Supplier network has become an important source of buyers' competitive advantage.China has become the largest manufacturing center and one of the most active markets in the world.Manufacturing enterprises in this market are facing increasingly fierce competition,constantly changing market demands,and emerging technological changes from international and domestic markets.Thus,manufacturing enterprises have more urgent need to integrate resources and capabilities of the supplier network,and improve their supply quality to win market competition.However,research shows there is a high failure rate in the alliance relationship between buyers and suppliers.Improper supplier selection,improper supplier governance and ineffective knowledge and information sharing play the roles in the failure of cooperation.Therefor,the key to achieve successful cooperation between buyers and suppliers is to choose suppliers wisely and integrate them into the whole supplier system,effectively manage the established buyer-supplier relationship and the entire supply chain and supplier network relationship.Therefore,based on the first-hand survey data collected from manufacturing enterprises in China and secondary archive data from China National Bureau of Statistics,this study focused on the theme of buyer-supplier relationship management and applied empirical methods to conduct research from buyer's supplier selection,governance and information sharing aspects,and hoped to provide some useful guidance for the buyer's supplier management practice.First,using 112 sample data and integrating the behavioral theory of the firm and relational network theory,this study investigated the mechanism of selecting new suppliers through relational referrals.By testing the impact of performance feedback on the selection of new suppliers through relational referrals,we find that performance feedback has a positive impact on relational referrals for supplier selection.Besides,this relationship will be strengthened when the intensity of market competition and specific investment in existing buyer-supplier relationship are high.Second,using 498 sample data and combining with the logic of contractual governance and relational governance from transaction cost economics and relational exchange theory,this study revealed the firm's behavioral mechanism behind the substitute vs.complementary relationship between contractual and relational governance from the perspective of the behavioral theory of the firm.We find that when firm's performance feedback is positive,the relational governance will be strengthened on the bases of existing contractual governance,and contract will be less used based on existing relational governance;when firm's performance feedback is negative,contractual governance will be strengthened on the bases of existing relationship,while relational governance will be less used based on existing contractual governance.Third,using 768 sample data and integrating the social conformity theory and social network theory,this study explored the information sharing problem of suppliers under the influence of multiple relationships.We find that suppliers embedded in supplier network will be exposed to informational and normative social influences from the adjacent relationships in the supplier network.Thus,the focal supplier tends to adjust its behavior to keep align with other suppliers in the network when sharing information to the buyer.This study broadens the research of buyer-supplier information sharing from the perspective of dyadic buyer-supplier relationship to the whole supplier network level.On the one hand,these studies fill some gaps of the research in the field of buyer-supplier relationship management and enrich the theories and knowledge in this area.On the other hand,the findings provide some useful implications for buyers to manage buyer-supplier relationship successfully.