When do they care to share? How manufacturers make contracted service partners share knowledge

Abstract

Manufacturing firms that outsource customer-facing services, risk losing touch with their customers and thereby forfeit valuable market and customer-related knowledge. To maintain informed and competitive, the manufacturer's customer-facing service partners should engage in knowledge sharing and transfer their market knowledge and insight to the firm. Building on knowledge transfer and organizational learning theory, this study investigates how contractual and non-contractual (i.e., relationship) characteristics influence knowledge sharing behavior by service partners. The authors specifically distinguish between sharing exploitative knowledge (insights that help the manufacturing firm to refine current skills and procedures) and exploratory knowledge (insights that help the manufacturing firm to challenge prior approaches to interfacing with the market). Based on survey data from 70 relationship managers from a large multinational firm and partial least squares path modeling, results show that contractual incentives had a negative effect on exploratory knowledge sharing, but not on exploitative knowledge sharing. The level of contract specification and relationship quality positively related to both types of knowledge sharing. Relationship manager experience related positively to exploratory knowledge sharing, but not to exploitative knowledge sharing. These findings provide valuable insights on how (non-)contractual mechanisms can be used to manage knowledge sharing in outsourced services.

Managing integration in outsourcing relationships — The influence of cost and quality priorities

“…In this study, we adopt a relationship focus on outsourcing, which can be considered as a complementary approach to the strategic view, addressing how to manage the outsourcing relationship after the decision to outsource has been made. Prior research on the management of the outsourcing relationship has studied, for example, practices for managing the relationship in different contexts (e.g., Baraldi et al, 2014;Levina & Vast, 2008;de Vries et al, 2014; see Appendix 1). Overall, this stream of research concludes that the management of the outsourcing relationship, including integration, is critical for successful outsourcing (e.g., Boulaksil & Fransoo, 2010;Harmanciouglu, 2009;Narasimhan et al, 2010).…”

“…The study contributes to the research on outsourcing by developing an understanding of the management of the outsourcing relationship in the operations context by illustrating how it depends on the operational strategic priority related to the specific object of outsourcing (Boulaksil & Fransoo, 2010;Handley & Benton, 2009Ishizaka & Blakiston, 2012;Narasimhan et al, 2010;Ndubisi, 2011;de Vries et al, 2014). Moreover, the study contributes to research on more generic buyer-supplier relationships by developing a contextualized understanding of the management of buyer-supplier relationships (e.g.…”

“…Taken together, the degree of interdependence between the parties is reciprocal and the relationship is highly mutually dependent, making integration particularly critical in outsourcing relationships (Baraldi et al, 2014;Boulaksil & Fransoo, 2010;Handley & Benton, 2009;Thompson, 1967;Van de Ven et al, 1976). Moreover, outsourcing relationships are highly complex as a result of high buyer power and task-and location-specific features, requiring a greater managerial emphasis on integration (Handley & Benton, 2012de Vries et al, 2014). The importance of understanding how to manage integration is increased by the significant costs associated with it (Galbraith, 1973).…”

Exploring the Motivational and Behavioral Foundations of External Technology Experts’ Knowledge Sharing in Collaborative R&D Projects: The Contingency Role of Project Formalization

“…First, structural governance refers to the design phase where the basis of the governance structure is defined (Steinicke, Wallenburg, and Schmoltzi, 2012). The effects of structural governance elements, such as contractual incentives and specification level (De Vries, Schepers, van Weele, and van der Valk, 2014), the number of contractual clauses (Reuer and Ariño, 2007), contractual functions such as coordinating or safeguarding (Hofman et al, 2017), and ownership models such as equity-and non-equity-based relationships (Murray and Kotabe, 2005) have been extensively evaluated in past works.…”

Alliance Portfolio Management and Sustainability of Entrepreneurial Firms

“…Relational governance is indispensable in alliance cooperation. De Vries et al [37] found that good relationship quality and cooperation experience can enhance the relationship strength between partners and that the relationship strength positively affects the development of exploitative and exploratory cooperation.…”