Adoption of electronic data interchange: The role of buyer-supplier relationships

This paper examines electronic data interchange (EDI) adoption and integrat ion by U.S. automobile industry suppliers. The paper constructs several hyp otheses from our literature survey and interviews with automotive industry managers, and tests these hypotheses using data from first- and second-tier automobile suppliers in the U.S. Our study shows: 1) the higher the freque ncy of transactions and the higher the percent sales to a customer, the mor e likely a supplier was to adopt EDI; 2) "buyer's push" seemed to be the mo st significant reason for suppliers' EDI adoption; 3) factors affecting EDI adoption were different from those affecting EDI integration and success; 4) managerial proactiveness seemed to be the most significant factor for ED I integration and success; and 5) the resource-dependency approach seemed t o be more suitable than the transaction-cost approach for explaining EDI ad option.