Customer-Supplier Joint Action & Shared Results

The purpose of this research is to study customer-supplier relationships, particularly their partnerships, to help managers and practitioners successfully design, develop, implement and deploy tools and joint practices as a means for an effective supply chain management (SCM). To achieve this purpose, a total of 1,811 potential survey questionnaire respondents responsible for purchasing, sales/marketing, quality-, and production- or operations-related functions of U.S. private manufacturing companies in SIC 35, 36, and 37 were used to collect quantitative data. Using 172 usable survey questionnaire responses, eight hypothesized relationships were tested using two independent (joint use of specific tools and joint practices) and four dependent variables (informed partners, role integrity, conflict resolution, and mutuality). From the overall perspective (customer+supplier), organizations with higher levels of joint action have higher degrees of informed partners whereas organizations with higher levels of joint action resolve conflicts formally and do not have higher degrees of mutuality.