Roger Moser

This paper presents the results of an empirical analysis of the current practices of, and key challenges to, domestic supplier integration in the Chinese automotive industry from the buyer's perspective. The results are based on case interviews with thirty automotive firms from various countries of origin with manufacturing operations in China. The research findings indicate that domestic supplier integration in terms of joint product development and advanced production planning activities between buyers and suppliers currently takes place to a relatively low extent. The study results also reveal that a lack of critical supplier capabilities as well as buyer-side constraints act as inhibiting factors.

Supplier integration has become an important concept for improving supply chain performance. The aim of this paper is to identify factors that facilitate and inhibit supplier integration in the context of the Chinese automotive industry. An inductive approach based on grounded theory was chosen as the research methodology, where data was collected through 30 detailed case interviews with subsidiaries of foreign automotive companies operating in China. The results indicate that buyer-side leadership is an important antecedent for building motivation, trust, and commitment among suppliers and for shaping their mindsets. This, in turn, facilitates strategic alignment and enables suppliers to build collaborative capabilities, which are finally shown to be a key enabler for successful supplier integration.

This paper seeks to develop a supplier integration framework in a Chinese context based on existing theories and empirical insights from the Chinese automotive industry. The objective is to develop a framework and identify a number of factors that can potentially facilitate supplier integration and ultimately improve supply chain performance. The framework comprises a causal chain with four key constructs, starting with supply chain leadership as an antecedent to alliance readiness, which in turn is proposed to yield a higher degree of supplier integration. Eventually, a higher degree of supplier integration is proposed to positively influence supply chain performance. By building on prior research and 30 case studies, the framework provides a China-specific approach to supplier integration and offers insights into the current status in the Chinese automotive industry.

Buyer-supplier relationships and interactions between the two parties have long been a popular topic of industrial marketing and purchasing. This paper proposes a process-based framework for buyer-supplier interactions from a dyadic relational perspective, with focus on the buyer side, and derives managerial implications for business practice. This paper is based on the interaction approach of IMP group and argues that the purchasing and marketing processes are interactive and each step of the respective process is done in sync with the other processes. This process interaction is thereby illuminated at both strategic and functional levels. At the strategic level, purchasing strategies of the buying company are developed from the relational perspective. At the functional level, the characteristics of process interaction during the different purchasing process stages are analyzed, integrating two perspectives: direct and indirect interaction types and degrees of interaction involvement. Managerial implications are then discussed. followed by conclusions and further research suggestions.