The Influence Of Supplier Innovativeness On Manufacturer Product Innovation: The Role Of Relationship Learning

Under the guidance of supply chain theory,companies began to seek cooperation with its suppliers.Suppliers' involved in manufacturing enterprise product innovation has become the direction of academics and business practitioners concern.As manufacturers' supply-network,and an important source of innovation,how to effectively use supplier innovativeness to improve innovation capacity of manufacturing companies,and to improve product innovation performance is a complex issue and worth exploring.Meanwhile,Relationship-learning,as a special form of organizational learning,suppliers and manufacturers can not only through specific cooperation between the two sides of information,knowledge and technology transfer and communication,but also because these interactions to develop more long-term stable and harmonious relations,cooperation in solving problems and obstacles.Can manufacturers use relationship-learning activities to get better use of suppliers innovativeness,to service manufacturing enterprise product innovation is a worthwhile problem to be solved.By combing and analyzing the relevant literature and research,first I summarized supplier innovativeness into three areas: innovation capability,innovation willingness and the tendency to contribute.Secondly,I introduced the "relational learning" theory into the supplier-manufacturer relations.Comprehensive pre-sort and summarize the proposed theoretical model and hypotheses,and choose the appropriate statistical analysis method,the proposed theory is validated.The results show:(1)The supplier innovativeness and relationship learning both have a significant impact on improving product innovation performance,which in part reflects a direct impact,partly reflected by indirect impact;(2)Relationship learning has a moderating effect on the relationship between supplier innovativeness and manufacturer innovation capability;(3)Relationship learning has a moderating effect of supplier innovativeness and manufacturer innovation performance directly.Therefore,in order to improve the performance of the final manufacturer innovation performance,manufacturers can pay attention to the following two aspects in the corporate practice: Evaluating the supplier innovativeness,choosing the right supplier to participate in the product innovation process;Strengthen product innovation among participating supplier relationships learning activities,exchanges,enhance mutual trust and establish a good learning atmosphere,to maintain close and stable relations of cooperation.