Could the double-edged nature of innovation partnership with suppliers invoke the “other sides” of trust and interdependence?
研究了供应商创新伙伴关系中信任与相互依赖的一致与不一致对伙伴关系的影响，发现其双刃剑效应掩盖了信任的正面和相互依赖的负面作用，且受议价能力和关系时长调节。
While developing innovation partnerships with suppliers could be of immense help to firms in achieving their innovation goals, such partnerships could have a double-edged effect as they could also result in opportunistic imitation and learning races among the partners. Accordingly, it is important to understand the factors that drive the development of innovation partnerships with suppliers. In this study, we consider the effect of congruence and incongruence of two such mechanisms – trust and interdependence. We also study the contingent role of bargaining power and relationship length. We test the hypotheses using polynomial regression in conjunction with the response surface methodology . Our results suggest that the double-edged nature of innovation partnership overshadows the broadly proclaimed positive side of trust and the negative side of interdependence. Additionally, when looking closely at the contingent effect of bargaining power and relationship length, the effects of congruence and incongruence in trust and interdependence seem quite intriguing. In the case of higher bargaining power as well as longer relationships, the congruence between trust and interdependence seems to be most conducive for innovation partnerships. Interestingly, while the positive effects of interdependence diminish whenever bargaining power is high, the dark side of trust is no longer an issue in the case of longer relationships.