Prior work has focused on the relationships between buyers and individual suppliers. However, many technological products are made up of a number of subcomponents whose completion requires coordinated efforts from different activity suppliers. Ours is one of the first papers to examine the selecting of a team of subcomponent suppliers as a function of each supplier’s individual characteristics and the experience the suppliers have in working with each other. Abstract and download

Topics: Buyer-supplier relationship, TCE, Teams, Technological capabilities, Problem solving view

We ask how firms select a supplier for an innovative component, focusing on the trade-offs suggested by three disparate literatures. Transaction cost economics focuses on the value of internalization, the literature on inter-firm relationships on the value of past relationships, and the firm capabilities literature on the value of superior capabilities. Abstract and download

Topics: TCE, Technological capabilities, Relational capabilities, Management of innovation