Title: Evaluating the total effect of early supplier involvement on project team effectiveness: collaboration and interaction

Authors: Sarah Jinhui Wu, Gary L. Ragatz

Addresses: Graduate School of Business Administration, Fordham University, 113 West 60th Street, New York, NY 10023, USA. ' Department of Supply Chain Management, The Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1122, USA

Abstract: Motivated by the inconsistent findings of the linkage between early supplier involvement practice and new product development success, this study adopts both the resource-based perspective and agency theory to investigate dynamic relationships between the manufacturer and supplier during the collaboration process. Survey data were used to empirically examine the impact of the resource factor (i.e. collaboration effect) and agency factors (i.e. interaction effect) on project team effectiveness. The results showed that selecting suppliers with appropriate knowledge and resources is necessary yet insufficient to improve project team effectiveness. The agency problem plays a dominant role in determining the quality of collaboration. In particular, the study identified information sharing and task programmability as two key governance mechanisms to curb suppliers| opportunistic behaviour. The study provides insightful managerial and policy implications for firms considering early supplier involvement practice in their innovation process.

Keywords: early supplier involvement; new product development; NPD; agency theory; collaboration; project teams; effectiveness; resource-based perspectives; dynamic relationships; manufacturers; interaction; knowledge; information sharing; task programmability; governance mechanisms; North America; opportunistic behaviour; opportunism; innovation; integrated SCM; supply chain management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISM.2010.033977

International Journal of Integrated Supply Management, 2010 Vol.5 No.3, pp.239 - 259

Published online: 05 Jul 2010 *

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