Orchestrating resource base, role, and position: a supplier’s strategy in buyer-dominated relationships

Abstract The literature that can be consulted today regarding supplier strategies focuses mainly on the buying company’s opportunities to structure, rationalize and develop its supply base. However, few studies have been undertaken in the automotive industry that focus on the supplier’s view of change. One significant characteristic of a supplier’s development is that it occurs in close relationship with the buying company, a relationship that can be described as buyer-dominated. This article focuses on the need for suppliers to develop their own strategies. The purpose of the article is to identify theoretical and empirical building blocks in a supplier’s strategy in these buyer-dominated relationships, to describe and analyze a supplier’s strategic development from traditional supplier to systems supplier, and to discuss managerial implications. The empirical material consists of a longitudinal in-depth case study, conducted in retrospective as well as in real time, and this study is itself based upon several case studies, including ones of Volvo and Saab Automotive. The findings indicate that the supplier’s systems strategy is a high-risk one, because it is based on an vision of a systems suppliership in the future. Even if the group of supplier has been able to form a close relationship with the end-product manufacturers (Volvo and Saab Automotive), the need remains for it to be able to interpret those manufacturers’ (buyers) actions and adapt its own strategies accordingly. An important feature of the supplier’s strategy should be cooperation with other suppliers and the creation of new structures that consist of a number of previously independent supplier companies. The supplier’s ability to orchestrate resource base, role and position is of great importance.