Authors: Hsin-Hui Chou; Shih-Chieh Fang; Yan Guo; Yuerong Liu
Interfirm relationships are seen as central elements in determining a firm’s competitive advantage and its long-term survival. Managing relationships, including the utilization of relationships, has been a sustaining and important issue in the IMP research stream. Despite the importance, our understanding of managing relationships remains limited, especially in a Chinese context. This is partially because firms operating in a network environment need to confront the ever-changing opportunities of and constraints to utilizing relationships. As a result, managing interfirm relationships is an important capability. This paper aims to explore how a firm utilizes relationships to gain its competitive advantage and prosperity in a Chinese context. To tackle this research question, we adopted a case study that took into account business interaction along a dimension of time. The case under investigation was ASIMCO Technologies Limited, which was founded in 1994 in China and which developed as a component manufacturer in the automotive industry. We attempted to uncover how ASIMCO developed and utilized interfirm relationships in the past decades so that it was able to be a key supplier to global automotive brands including Cummins, Daimler and Volkswagen. Through the case study, we provide theoretical and managerial implications
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Publish Year: 2016
Conference: Cape Town (2016)