Supplier Relationship Management, The Impact On Business Performance

With the development of economic globalization and information technology, supply chain management and supplier management have gained more and more attention in many fields. However, supplier relationship management, as an important part of supplier management, is the basic that the supply chain can move smoothly and is also the source of value creation in supply chain.There are two different viewpoints on supplier relationship management according to extant literatures. One point thinks that the relationship between suppliers and purchasers is adverse, and another point thinks that the purchasers regard the supplier as friends. However, no matter the relationship is adverse or friendly, any of them has the inherent flaws. So we can't conclude incautiously which style of relationship is better, and we should make a good choice according to the environment. This is the purpose of this research.So, this research takes the relationship between suppliers and purchasers as the objective, and clarifies the relationship as four different styles using two dimensions. The four styles include slack relationship, push relationship, interactive relationship and pull relationship. The aim is to find out whether the performances under distinct relationships have significant differences. First, this research explains why the supply chain management comes forth and makes a simple introduction on the existing condition of supplier relationship management. In the meanwhile, this part points out that there are some insufficiencies in the extant studies and protests the research means and the questions. Second, this research summarizes the factors influencing the relationship and the perspectives from which the previous literatures studied. This part makes the academic foundation for the future research. Third, this research makes a portfolio for supplier relationship and explains why we choose such explanation factors. Through comparing the performances, we conclude that there is no bad or good in the relationship, and is just suitable or unsuitable. As far as the relationship is matching with environment, any kind of relationship is all right.