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Purpose Technologies change quickly in the automotive industry. This can provide opportunities to firms from emerging economies who try to enter the world stage of automotive production, provided they can react to this more nimbly than established competitors. How technological change affects the supply chain coordination of incumbents from developed economies and new entrants from emerging economies should strongly determine the speed of competitive reaction. By using the example of automotive transmission development, the purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual model for the analysis and offer research propositions. Design/methodology/approach The authors build a conceptual model based on information processing theory and offer research propositions based on case study evidence of four automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and five suppliers. Findings The authors find symptoms of two larger trends: increasing specialization and technological linkages and a need to increase external supply chain integration beyond traditional structures. Comparing the effects on Japanese and German incumbents, the authors find that increasing external supply chain linkages proves to be harder for Japanese OEMs. Tight links and routines in the Japanese supply chain networks may harm OEM efficiency under the new technological conditions, e.g. the lack of complete part specifications and high demands for customization. Looking at effects on emerging market firms, Chinese OEMs use quasi-open modular production settings in transmission development and lean strongly on inputs from specialized foreign tier-one suppliers. Speed advantages must be weighed against long-term disadvantages of dependence and insufficient R&D investments. Research limitations/implications The study explores how technological change affects inter-firm development processes. The authors propose a framework and hypotheses based on information processing theory and link the findings to the discussion on the impact of national institutional context on supply chain coordination. Practical implications OEMs wanting to adapt complex existing internal structures to the changing demands for information processing should focus first on improving internal capacities by improving the amount and richness of information flow. Implementing new standards for simultaneous and standardized software development across the supply chain is a key point for this. A second step should be to boost the internal capacity to process higher richness of information, i.e. to understand the meta-knowledge necessary to integrate across technological areas in the development of electronic control units (ECUs). Originality/value The authors draw on original interview data in developed and emerging markets and information processing theory to explore the complexity of inter-firm coordination in automotive supply chains.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how to align purchasing portfolio management with sourcing negotiation styles. Design/methodology/approach The authors have adopted two-step field tests: a case study; and a follow-up experimental test with 77 sourcing professionals. Findings The authors note that Kraljic Portfolio Matrix (KPM) provides a valuable guide for determining sourcing negotiation styles (i.e. competitive negotiation for leverage items, collaborative negotiation for strategic items and accommodative negotiation for bottleneck items). Interestingly, effective buyers adopt right negotiation styles based on the switching costs of changing suppliers, the dependence level on specific suppliers and the availability of alternative suppliers. Originality/value This study shows that aligning purchasing portfolio management with sourcing negotiation styles improves the chances of effective buying outcomes. Practical implications suggest that successful buyers move beyond interpreting generic predictions of the KPM framework and rather implement specific negotiation styles to maximize the potential benefits of purchasing portfolio management.

East Asia is the origin and target market for an increasing number of technological innovations.We use the East Asian automotive industry as a focal point to discuss central questions of innovation research such as modularity, product architecture, and the dynamics of state sponsorship in national innovation systems. Two developments in the East Asian automotive industry are of particular interest to the broader innovation community: 1) East Asian firms and consumers are forerunners in the current transition to energy-efficient innovations and the future of automobiles. These technological developments will lead to a 'hybridization' of product architectures that need to be reflected in firm's competitive strategies. 2) Particularly in China, the role of the state for national innovation systems is pronounced in the automotive sector. The way national and regional frameworks interact with broader technology trends shapes business innovation, and this understanding can inform firms in other sectors as well. Before highlighting the contributions of each paper of the special issue, we provide contextual background regarding the unique trajectories of the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean automotive industry, and summarize the current state of research. We conclude with an outlook on future research topics. Acknowledgements: The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous support for this project by a grant by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) at the IN-EAST School of Advanced Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen (Förderschwerpunkt "Stärkung und Weiterentwicklung der Regionalstudien (Area Studies)" , 2013-2017). Furthermore, we would like to thank the Technovation Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Linton and all reviewers involved in this special issue for their time and dedication. A special thank you also goes to our esteemed colleague Sven Horak for his continuous support and advice throughout the process.

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