Research On Supplier Innovativeness And Its Exploitation For Manufacturers' Innovation Improvement:A Relational View

Increasingly fierce competition environment at home and abroad.and th e diverse needs of customers madeinnovation pressure of manufacturers has proliferated,the manufacturer only depend on the internal resources can not meet its demand of innovation.Supplier is the most important upstream material provider for the manufacturer,and they are a valuable source of latest product and market information,innovation with suppliers become an important way of open innovation for manufacturer.But the collaborative innovation often dose not achieve the expected result and associate with a high rate of failure.The reason for this is that not all supplier can help to improve innovation performance of manufacturer.Supplier innovativeness(SI)can be seen as "indirect values" that supplier possesses and has proved significantly improve manufacturer performance.SI is an important criterion for evaluate and manage suppliers for manufacturer.Evaluating and managing innovative suppliers and exploiting SI effectively are important objective for manufacturer.However,the understanding of SI in existing literature mainly based on organizational innovativeness,much less research focuses on the particularity of SI thatunderline the supplier's contribution to manufacturer innovation in the process of manufacturer-supplier collaborative innovation.At the same time,prior research mainly focus on the direct effect of SI on innovation performance of manufacturer,and do not uncover the intermediate process.In addition,few researches have analyzed the exploitation of SI mainly focus on the unilateral behavior of manufacturer,but neglect the important role of mutual invest behavior of supplier and manufacturer.The existing research mainly concentrated in the developed countries,has not yet specified how to exploiting SI effectively in Chinese manufacturers.On the basis of reviewing the existing literature,firstly,this study based on the organizational innovativeness and relational view,to analysis the nature of SI.Taking Chinese manufacturers as research objects,the study utilizes the in-depth interview and grounded theory to explore the concept and dimensions of SI,and then generate an explain framework of the construct.Subsequently we compile the scale of SI,and then a large-sample survey is conducted.By factor analysis of the valid data collected from Chinese manufacturers,we have tested and verified the construct of SI and developed the SI scale.Secondly,this study analyzes the intermediary process between SI and innovation performance of manufacturer,explores the mediating effect of supplier innovation sharing,and illustrates how to maintain the effect of SI on innovation performance.Further based on the relational view and the framework of determinants of relational rents,this paper explores the moderated effect of relationship-specific adaptation,power,guanxi institution and absorptive capacity on the mediating effectof supplier innovation sharing.Thirdly,on the basis of theoretical analysis on mechanism of SI exploitation,a moderated mediating effect theoretical model is presented,and the hypotheses are put forward.Studying on Chinese manufacturers,a large-sample survey is conducted.For questionnaire,hierarchical regression analysis is performed to testthe hypotheses.According to the results,this study examines the mediating effect ofsupplier innovation sharing,andthe moderated effect of relationship-specific adaptation,power,guanxi institution and absorptive capacity on the intermediation.Finally,the study proposes the management recommendations from the aspect of evaluate and manage suppliers and exploit SI effectively,with the view of provide reference of exploiting advanced knowledge and capacity of suppliers effectively for Chinese manufacturers.The innovation of this study and conclusions are as follows:Firstly,this paper expands the theoretical perspective,refines the dimensions of construct of SI.The attention of previous studies of SI mainly learned from the research achievement of organizational innovativeness,emphasize the innovativeness that supplier is seen as an independent organization.Drawing from organizational innovativeness theory and relational view,this study argue that SI is composed of technological capability,thirst for innovation,willingness of resource sharing and relational collaboration capability.The result indicates that the SI can be described from two perspectives of supplier itself and manufacturer-supplier relationship,not only emphasize the innovative capacity and self-expectation for continuous innovation,but as one of the most important partner of manufacturer,SI should emphasize the willingness that supplies use advanced knowledge andtechnology it possesses to the innovation of manufacturer,and the ability of coordinated the partner relationship in the process of innovation.Secondly,this paper explores the intermediary process and reveals the "black-box"between SI and innovation performance of manufacturer.The existing literature merely highlights the direct effect of SI on performance of manufacturer does not reveal the intermediary process between SI and innovation performance.The study believes that only realize the importance of advanced technologies and capabilities is not enough,the manufacturer also need to understand the value of required knowledge indeed sharing by suppliers.The results indicated that,SI has obvious positive impact on supplier innovation sharing,the supplier innovation sharing has a partially mediated effect between SI and innovation performance.The findings provide an important new idea and enrich the research on the internal mechanism of the relationship between SI and innovation performance.Moreover,this study empirically tests the moderated mediating effect ofrelationship-specific adaptation,power,guanxi institution and absorptive capacity on supplier innovation sharing,enriches and develops the mechanism of SI exploitation.Specifically,the mutual relationship-specific adaptation of manufacturer and supplier extends the existing researches that merely underline the unilateral relationship-specific adaptation of manufacturer or supplier;For the practice of supplier involvement in innovation of manufacturer in China,this study explores the moderating role of reward power,coercive power and guanxi institution,reveals the speciality of exploiting SI effectively in Chinese situation,provides new ideas for indigenous reserch of SI exploitation;In addition,different from previous studies that treated the absorptive capacity as a whole,this study explores the moderating effect of potential absorptive capacity on the first stage of intermediation process between SI and innovation performance,and the moderating effect of realized absorptive capacity on the second intermediation process,not only provides more detailed perspective on SI exploitation mechanism,but explores the mechanism deeply.The results indicate that,SI has obvious positive impact on supplier innovation sharing,the supplier innovation sharing has a partially mediated effect between SI and innovation performance.Manufacturer relationship-specific adaptations,supplier relationship-specific adaptations,reward power,guanxi institution and potential absorptive capacity has positively and obviously moderated the mediating effect of the supplier innovation sharing on the relationship between SI and innovation performance,but coercive power has not obvious moderated the mediation effect.Finally,compare to the previous study that merely introduces the moderator,this study constitutes a moderated mediation model to explores the mechanism of supplier innovativeness exploitation and analyzes the mediating effect that the first stage and second stage was moderated,this research method is helpful for combine the moderator and mediator to explore mechanism of supplier innovativeness exploitationdeeply and broadly.