The Impact Of Supplier Relationship On Supplier Perfomance In China Automobile Industry: On The Knowledge Perspective

With the emergence of knowledge economy and globalization and integration of economy, the China automotive manufacturing environment has made rapid and deep change. Due to the more and more intensive market competition nowadays, it is a new approach of gaining competition advantage by fully exertion and utilization of exterior resources. In the trend of knowledge economy and globalization, enterprises are becoming more cooperative and dependent on exterior resource in order to gain competition advantage, it is also a new approach to improve competition capability for our national automotive industry by management amelioration of relationship between enterprise and exterior entities. In the situation that automotive suppliers are playing a more important role, it has important theoretical implication and practical value for investigation the influence on supplier performance by automotive relationship.The core question given by this paper is: as for China automotive industry, how to affect supplier performance by supplier relationship? This paper tries to study and answer the question on the knowledge perspective. The question includes: (1) Whether it can affect automotive supplier performance by supplier relationship? (2) Does knowledge play mediatory role in the process of automotive supplier relationship affecting supplier performance? (3) Is there difference between automotive manufacturing-supplier relationship and supplier-supplier relationship in terms of features and way of affecting supplier performance for these two type of relationship?Based on the native and foreign related research, it proposes a conceptual model of automotive supplier relationship affecting supplier performance. Taking the China automotive suppliers as study object, it investigates the relationship between different dimensions of automotive supplier relationship and that of supplier performance. It mainly analyzes the mediatory role of knowledge for the relationship. This study aims to find the relationship between supplier relationship and supplier performance, and find how supplier relationship affects supplier performance.The study employs survey questionnaire as the main tool of collecting data. Taking the automotive suppliers as the main samples, 166 questionnaires were issued yielding 84 available returns, and the available questionnaire rate is 50.6%. For data dealing, it mainly employs methods of factor analysis, bivariate variable analysis and structural equation model to empirical test the hypothesis embedded in the model. Conducting theoretical analysis and empirical study, it mainly addresses the following conclusions: (1) When ignoring the knowledge creation, knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing, and organization learning, the trust and flexibility dimensions of China automotive manufacturing-supplier relationship have significant positive influence on supplier's product supplying performance, whereas the communication dimension has not significant influence. As for China automotive supplier-supplier relationship, all of its communication, trust and flexibility dimension have significant positive influence on supplierr's product supplying performance. Additionally, for both of these two types of relationships, the supplierr's product supplying performance has significant positive influence on supplier's product innovation performance.(2) Based on structural equation model analysis, it verifies that the proposed concept model can be accepted for China automotive supplier relationship. In the model, the communication, trust and flexibility dimensions have significant positive influence on supplier product innovation performance mediated by knowledge creation, knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing, and organization learning,(3) It has conducted path analysis and effects decomposition related to the proposed model. The analysis result has partially verified the mediating roles of knowledge creation, knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing, and organization learning (SEM does not show the direct effect on product innovation performance). For China automotive manufacturing-supplier relationship, all of communication, trust and flexibility dimensions have significant different positive influence on knowledge creation, knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing, and organization learning, and only knowledge transfer has significant positive impose on supplier product innovation performance. For China automotive supplier-supplier relationship, all of communication, trust and flexibility dimensions have almost same impose on knowledge creation, knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing, and organization learning, and only organization learning has significant positive influence on supplier product innovation performance.(4) Through comparative analysis of the measurement model of the two types of China automotive manufacturing-supplier relationship and supplier-supplier relationship, it has found that they are different in the three dimensions of communication, trust and flexibility, four types of knowledge creation, knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing, and organization learning, and supplier performance.