Triadic Supply Network Relationship in Supplier Involved New Product Development: Case study research in China and Italy

Supplier involvement (SI) in new product development (NPD) has been intensively studied in literature, focusing on how buying firm manages the interface with its supplier (e.g. (Ragatz et al. 1997; Petersen et al. 2005; van Echtelt et al. 2008)). However, on the one hand, this dyadic buyer-supplier focus has been challenged by (Choi & Wu 2009a), arguing that the smallest unit of a network should be a triad. On the other hand, the triadic supply network relationship (SNR) is still unexplored specifically under the context of collaborative product development. Therefore, this paper aims to bridge the two separated pieces of research, outlining the potential configurations of triadic SNR and to validate the impact of context variables when suppliers are involved in the NPD projects. To this aim, 18 case studies were developed from Chinese and Italian companies in manufacturing industry, and their triadic SNR configuration is studied focusing on the collaborative attitude among the actors. Findings raised interesting insight that, when particular focus is placed on SI in NPD, the theoretical validity of several configurations might not be applicable in practice. Also, the impact of context variables on the triadic SNR was complemented by integrating the supplier-supplier dimension to the existing literature on buyer-supplier perspective. In the end, we discussed potential influencing factors not being included in this paper thanks to the semi-structured interviews, making the first attempt to understand the complex network relationship dynamics in supplier involved NPD.