Jennifer Priestley

DSc 9200

November 13, 2001

1. Paper Selected – “Bridging Inter- and Intra-firm Boundaries: Management of Supplier Involvement in Automobile Product Development” Strategic Management Journal, 22, pp 403-433.

2. Akira Takeishi, Institute of Innovation Research, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo Japan.

3. What is the most effective way to manage a supplier relationship?

4. Applied Descriptive – The author explores the answer to the question above through a study of the Japanese Auto Industry.

5. Through an in depth study of how the Japanese automakers manage their supplier relationships, the author developed 6 hypotheses regarding these relationships and then tested each one. The primary hypotheses that were proven and found to be the most relevant were:

• A component development project in which an automaker exercised early, integrated problem solving with a supplier should exhibit a higher level of design quality.
• A component development project in which an automaker and a supplier communicate face-to-face frequently should exhibit a higher level of component design quality.
• A component development project in which an automaker’s engineers had a higher level of knowledge about the component should exhibit a higher level of component design quality.

6. Any firm that has “preferred vendors” or manages outsourcing projects would find this article of interest.

7. I found the Strategic Management Journal articles very interesting and applicable.