INTERFIRM RELATIONSHIPS IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN - THE SMALL SUPPLIERS VIEW

The need for global market presence, the complexity of new product dev elopment, and the emphasis on core competence are making alliances amo ng firms more important, and recent evidence suggests that these issue s are affecting small suppliers as well as the large firms that are th eir customers, This paper studied the relationship orientation (i.e., the perceived importance,, of interfirm relations) in a fragmented sup plier industry whose single largest customer group is automotive OEMs. The primary objective of the research was the identification of facto rs that discriminate between firms with high and low relationship orie ntations. The study found four factors describing benefits and barrier s associated with interfirm relationships, and found that firms with a high relationship orientation were smaller and more optimistic about the industry's ability to support a greater number of firms in the fut ure, and perceived faster technology change than firms with a low rela tionship orientation. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Inc.