The document discusses two case studies of collaborative partnerships between suppliers and manufacturers, Freqon and NordAlu and Swedwood and Akzo Nobel. In both cases, collaborative effort and sharing of knowledge between the partners was crucial to developing new technologies. While the technologies were initially developed for the manufacturers' specific needs, the shared knowledge allowed them to potentially be adapted for other customers. Similarly, the document discusses how communication and collaboration are important for maintaining valuable business relationships and enhancing performance between organizations.
The document discusses two case studies of collaborative partnerships between suppliers and manufacturers, Freqon and NordAlu and Swedwood and Akzo Nobel. In both cases, collaborative effort and sharing of knowledge between the partners was crucial to developing new technologies. While the technologies were initially developed for the manufacturers' specific needs, the shared knowledge allowed them to potentially be adapted for other customers. Similarly, the document discusses how communication and collaboration are important for maintaining valuable business relationships and enhancing performance between organizations.
The document discusses two case studies of collaborative partnerships between suppliers and manufacturers, Freqon and NordAlu and Swedwood and Akzo Nobel. In both cases, collaborative effort and sharing of knowledge between the partners was crucial to developing new technologies. While the technologies were initially developed for the manufacturers' specific needs, the shared knowledge allowed them to potentially be adapted for other customers. Similarly, the document discusses how communication and collaboration are important for maintaining valuable business relationships and enhancing performance between organizations.
was to develop extruded aluminium components as an input in Freqons frequency converters. In both cases, collaborative effort and knowledge from both supplier and manufacturer was crucial to the development of the new technology. And although both technolo- gies were developed to the manufacturers specific requirements (for example, the fit of NordAlus converters depended heavily on Freqons contribution to the project), the knowledge gained potentially allowed the application to be adapted to other uses or customers. In the Swedwood/Akzo Nobel case, despite the successful development of a new coating technology, the technology was even not applied to its original use, but was adopted to other production lines and transferred to other manufacturers.
Similarly, literature in relationship marketinghas recognized how collab
orative communication is critical to fostering and maintaining valueenhancing inter-organizational relationships (e.g.,Anderson et al.,1994;Mohr and Nevin,1990; Mohr etal., 1996;Schultzand Evans, 2002). Reecting its centrality to businessperformance, one business executive asserted, com-munication is as fundamental to business as carbon is tophysical life (Reinsch, 2001, p. 20).Operations management researchers have alsodocumented how in ter-organizational communicationenhances buyersupplier performanc e
Given the increasing importance of strategiccollaboration among
supply chain partners (Contractorand Lorange, 1988; Kanter, 1994), the issue of howrelational competencies generate sustainable strategicadvantage has attracted a great deal of scholarlyattention (Dy er and Singh, 1998; Kale et al., 2000;Lorenzoni and Lipparini, 1999). The development of relational competencies requires that firms adopt acollaborative managerial mindset for building strategicadvantage (Ohmae, 1989). Leaders in such firmsarticulate a strategic intent by creating an imbalancebetween the firms strategic goals and their currentstocks of resources and capabilities (H amel andPrahalad, 1994). Such a strategic intent then drivesfirms to acquire, access, or develop additional resourcesthrough cooperation. Additionally, firms may formstrategic partnerships to access or acquire unique andvaluable resources that they lack, or leverage
socialresources, such as reputation, status, and legitimacy(Eisenhard
t and Schoonhoven, 1996). Thus, firms thatemphasize cooperation among supply chain partnersmay achieve greater economic benefits compared tothose that espouse traditional, zero-sum-based notion of competition. Forexample,Toyotascooperation with itssuppliers enhances its competitive position as well as