The scope, motivation and dynamic of Guest Engineering

The exchange of technical personnel between organizational actors in a supp ly network has become known as Guest Engineering (GE). Despite increasing p opularity as an inter-organisational arrangement (especially in the automot ive sector) it has generated relatively little academic research and theref ore this paper seeks to extend our understanding of GE by exploring how its scope is determined, what motivates the participants and how the relations hips evolve. The paper draws on extant GE, supply networks and Resource-Bas ed View (RBV) literature to derive research propositions that are used to a nalyse empirical work carried out with four automotive suppliers and four a utomotive OEMs. A number of preliminary conclusions are drawn. At a micro-p roject level, the criticality of the individual 'playing the GE role' is hi ghlighted, as are related concerns that collaborative team structures often fail to address broader social/cultural characteristics. At a macro-projec t level, the study argues that difficulties and mistrust will often charact erise integrated and competitively successful GE relationships. Finally, at a strategic level, GE needs to be understood as a process of resource tran sfer and transformation, and therefore the management of interdependency an d power asymmetry are core considerations in effective adoption. The paper concludes with recommendations for further critical and practical work.