Authors: Jarmila Kopecka
Summary
Research Aims and Research Questions
In today’s world of multi-component and multi-technology products, firms are obliged to seek knowledge for new product development (NPD) from external sources. Supplier firms are one such external source.
The thesis aims to contribute to the development of a theory on supplier involvement in new product development (NPD) by advancing understanding of the motives and conditions for the utilization of supplier information and knowledge in the fuzzy front end (FFE) of NPD.
The term ‘fuzzy front end’ (FFE) refers to the activities that the firm undertakes prior to a NPD project. The FFE ends when the NPD project is launched, or rejected. The FFE of NPD is information intensive: it requires seeking, accessing and selecting different types of information from both internal and external sources. Previous research focused mostly on the external source of consumers and how ideas from consumers can lead to the generation of new product concepts. By comparison, the suppliers’ contribution to the FFE of NPD has received less attention.
The first empirical study on supplier involvement in the FFE of NPD was published only recently (Wagner, 2012). This is surprising given the fact that the earliest research on supplier involvement in NPD dates back to 1980’s. At first the focus was on the automotive industry in Japan. Later, the research was extended to other countries and other industries. The literature review in Chapter 2 (pp. 21-95) outlines the growing interest in supplier involvement in NPD in relation to the new product market performance.
The present thesis has a different objective in that it investigates supplier involvement in the FFE of NPD from the perspective of the use and non-use of supplier information and knowledge. The thesis examines the exchange and utilization of supplier information and knowledge at the micro-social level of the firm between the individuals who work in the FFE of NPD. Three functional areas have been selected for the study, namely: (Design) Engineering and Purchasing of the customer firm and Sales Engineering of the supplier firm.
As the (Design) Engineers, Purchasers and Sales Engineers exchange supplier information and knowledge with one another, they form pairs, or dyads, in which the (Design) Engineers and Purchasers are the users, and the Sales Engineers are the providers of supplier information and knowledge. The Conceptual Framework (Fig. 3.3) in the Methodology Chapter (Ch. 3, pp. 97-127) illustrates the possible dyad configurations. The supposition behind the Conceptual Framework is that the utilization of supplier information and knowledge in the FFE of NPD is an outcome of a dyadic information relationship between the user and the provider, and that the information relationships are enabled by tie modality (i.e., the type of social tie that exists between the exchanging parties).
The Conceptual Framework draws on the theory of “The Strength of Weak Ties” (Granovetter, 1973, 1982; Levin and Cross, 2004), when it conjectures that the type of social tie (e.g., strong tie, weak tie, and trusted weak tie) influences whether or not the exchanged supplier information and knowledge will be utilized. The thesis seeks answers to the following Research Questions:
RQ1: What does constitute an information relationship between the individuals in the functions of (Design) Engineering, Purchasing and Sales Engineering of supplier and customer firms during the fuzzy front end (FFE) of new product development (NPD)? What type of information and knowledge is exchanged?
RQ2: How does an information relationship between the individuals in the functions of (Design) Engineering, Purchasing and Sales Engineering of supplier and customer firms work? How does the exchange of information and knowledge take place?
RQ3: Why do some information relationships between the individuals in the functions of (Design) Engineering, Purchasing and Sales Engineering of supplier and customer firms lead to the utilization of supplier information and knowledge, and other do not?
Structure and findings of the thesis
The research design of the thesis is a multiple case study involving four firms. The structure consists of four Within-case Analyses and a Cross-case Analysis.
The Within-case Analyses (Chapters 4-7, pp. 129 – 231) follow an uniform pattern and analyse the firms in two steps. Step 1 briefly describes the external information relationships of the firm under study. Step 2 examines the information relationships of the firm at the micro-social level. It analyses the interpersonal dyadic information relationships between (Design) Engineers, Purchasers, and Sales Engineers. The analysis is guided by the Research Questions, and focuses on the What’s, the How’s, and the Why’s/Why not’s of these dyadic information relationships. A tabular display at the end of each chapter summarizes the findings (Miles and Huberman, 1994).
The Within-case Analyses of the dyadic information relationships in the four firms resulted in the identification of 22 Salient Issues (Table 8.1 in Chapter 8), drawn from the researcher’s Reflective Comments about the found case evidence. The Salient issues and the accompanying Reflective Comments can be found in text-boxes throughout the Within-case Analyses. In turn, the Salient Issues served as input for the Cross-case Analysis in Chapter 8.
The Cross-case Analysis (Chapter 8, pp. 233 – 300) identified and investigated four Multicase Themes that characterized the information relationships in the FFE of NPD across the four firms. The Multicase Themes were: Social Ties, Single Sourcing, Boundary Objects, and Trust.
The Cross-case Analysis examined the credibility of the Multicase Themes by analysing the Multicase Themes against the background of primary scholarly work (Section 8.3). Next, the Cross-case Analysis validated the Research Questions using the Multicase Themes and the underlying Salient Issues (Section 8.4). The Cross-case Analysis further resulted in the formulation of the Cross-case Assertions about the Multicase Themes (Section 8.5). Lastly, the Cross-case Analysis examined the Multicase Theme in relation to the Conceptual Framework (Section 8.6), which resulted in a modification of the Conceptual Framework shown in Fig. 8.4.
The modification related to the framework’s construct of the utilization of supplier information and knowledge. The Conceptual Framework in Fig. 3.3 in Chapter 3 conjectured that the exchange of supplier information and knowledge would automatically result in the utilization of that supplier information and knowledge. However, the case evidence drawn from the analysis of the Multicase Theme of Trust (Section 8.3.4, Box 8.4), and mirrored in the Cross-case Assertion about the Multicase Theme of ‘Physical (Boundary) Objects’ (Section 8.5.3) indicated that the utilization of supplier information was not an instant action, but a process consisting of two phases: adoption and implementation. Moreover, the evidence revealed that the two phases were not temporally linked: there was no time-ordered sequence. The adoption phase was found to be a separate process from that of implementation, thus confirming the time-gap identified by Rogers (1983) in his theory of Innovation Diffusion. In modifying the construct of the utilization of supplier information and knowledge, the concept of ‘actionable knowledge’ (Cross and Sproull, 2004), identified in the literature review (Chapter 2, Section 2.4.3), has proved useful because it combines knowledge utilization and dyadic interpersonal social relationships.
Conclusions
The contribution of the final Conceptual Framework (Fig. 8.4) to the development of theory on supplier involvement in new product development (NPD) is fourfold.
First, the Conceptual Framework concentrates on the less researched field of the FFE of NPD and the potential benefit of supplier information and knowledge therein;
Secondly, the Conceptual Framework presents the customer/supplier interaction during the FFE of NPD as a dyadic information relationship between the functional areas at the micro-social level of the customer and supplier firm;
Thirdly, the Conceptual Framework links the utilization of supplier information and knowledge in the FFE of NPD to the theory of Innovation Diffusion (Rogers, 1983) by highlighting the time gap between the adoption and implementation of supplier information and knowledge; and
Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, the Conceptual Framework draws on the research on social ties and how social relationships facilitate and affect the exchange and utilization of information and knowledge (Cross and Sproull, 2004; Granovetter, 1973, 1982; Hansen, 1999; Levin and Cross, 2004). In consequence, the Conceptual Framework presents the utilization of supplier information and knowledge in the FFE of NPD from a relational perspective.
Future research could focus on how to measure the utilization of supplier information in the FFE of NPD. The present thesis has identified two objects of measurement (Dul and Hak, 2008), both of which are directly related to the utilization of supplier information and knowledge, and would therefore allow to extract evidence about the value of the utilization of supplier information and knowledge. The two objects of measurement are the Multicase Themes of Physical (Boundary) Objects and Single Sourcing. Thus, by measuring, for example, the frequency with which the Physical (Boundary) Objects were used in the FFE of NPD, or the frequency with which the customer firm engaged in Single Sourcing, would give an indication about the value of the utilization of supplier information and knowledge to the customer firm.
Managerial implications
The first managerial implication of the thesis’ findings is that firms need to acknowledge supplier firms as a knowledge source, and not only as a trading partner. The evidence from the four case studies suggests that such increased awareness of supplier knowledge is more likely to arise as a result of a bottom-up process, with (Design) Engineers taking the lead. The (Design) Engineers have frequent hands-on exchange of knowledge with the suppliers’ Sales Engineers and, therefore, are in a better position to appreciate the benefits of supplier information and knowledge than the NPD Managers, who have a tendency to downplay the potential contribution of suppliers’ knowledge to the FFE of NPD.
The second managerial implication is that the deployment of social ties to access and disseminate knowledge, both within the firm and across the firm’s boundaries, offers a complementary approach to managing customer/supplier relationships. The case evidence shows that exchanging expertise with another party takes time and mutual trust. Therefore, Management should empower and award the employees for investing time and effort to build social ties with their counterparts in supplier firms. Management should be aware that having a solid social network represents a new type of capability that is difficult to replicate and can therefore become a source of competitive advantage.
References:
Cross, R. and Sproull, L. (2004). More than an answer: information relationships for actionable knowledge, Organization Science, 15 (4), 446-462.
Dul, J. and Hak, T. (2008). Case Study Methodology in Business Research. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380.
Granovetter, M. (1982). The strength of weak ties: a network theory revisited. In: P. V. Marsden and N. Lin (Eds.) Social Structure and Network Analysis. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, p. 105- 130.
Hansen, M.T. (1999). The search-transfer problem: the role of weak ties in sharing knowledge across organization subunits. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44 (1), 82-111.
Kopecka, J. A. (2013) Why Didn.t They Ask the Supplier? The Utilization of Supplier Information and Knowledge in the Fuzzy Front End of New Product Development. 379 pages. PhD thesis, Delft University of Technology. ISBN 978-90-9027742-4.
Levin, D. Z. and Cross, R. (2004). The strength of weak ties you can trust: the mediating role of trust in effective knowledge transfer. Management Science, 50 (11), 1477-1490.
Miles, M. B. and Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook. 2nd Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rogers, E. M. (1983). Diffusion of Innovations. 3rd Edition. New York, NY: The Free Press.
Wagner, S. M. (2012). Tapping supplier innovation. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 48 (2), 37-52.
Publish Year: 2013