Co‐opetition, distributor's entrepreneurial orientation and manufacturer's knowledge acquisition: Evidence from China

Abstract

a b s t r a c tBy viewing cooperation and different types of conflicts as "co-opetition" factors in a manufacturerdistributor supply chain, this paper provides a conceptual model for examining the effects of cooperation and conflicts on a manufacturer's knowledge acquisition process and for exploring the moderating effects of a distributor's entrepreneurial orientation on the relationships between co-opetition factors and the manufacturer's knowledge acquisition. This conceptual model is tested with 225 dyad samples from manufacturer-distributor supply chains in China. The results show that cooperation and the type of conflict have both individual and interactive effects on the manufacturer's knowledge acquisition, thus highlighting the importance of the co-opetition perspective on supply chain knowledge management. More importantly, the results show that the entrepreneurial orientation of a distributor positively moderates the relationships between co-opetition factors and a manufacturer's knowledge acquisition, implying that strengthening the distributor's entrepreneurial orientation can improve the efficiency of co-opetition and thereby affect the knowledge acquisition of the manufacturer, and highlighting the importance of blended analysis across the domains of supply chain management and entrepreneurship.

Customer integration and operational performance: The mediating role of information quality

“…In fact, so important is the role of EO that in contexts where EO is low, competitive advantage is not secured from employing flexibility and cost resources. This may be why there has been increasing interest in research into the intersection between entrepreneurship and OM (Handfield et al, 2009;Hsu et al, 2011;Kickul et al, 2011;Li et al, 2011); researchers have begun to perceive the criticality of EO.…”

The Relationship between Manufacturer and Distributors: Knowledge Transfer and Performance

“…Li et al (2011). Past studies like Carr and Pearson (1999), also showed that information access is a key aspect for the buyer-supplier relationship.…”

“…At the same time, the manufacturer can invest in activities, such as monitoring the distributor's performance or training its team (Y. Li et al, 2011).…”

“…Y. Li, Liu and Liu (2011) found that co-operative activities improve knowledge acquisition by the manufacturer from the distributor. Thus, Frazier (2009) stressed that, as distributors play a central role in generating sales for manufacturers, the latter should transfer an amount of tacit, explicit knowledge on products and their benefits, and "encourage intermediate persons to process and integrate such knowledge to enhance their capabilities" (Frazier, 2009, p. 33).…”

Research on the Mechanism of Cross Organizational Knowledge Sharing in BIM Competitive Environment

“…Yang Wei [6] based on the perspective of competition and cooperation, proposed the existence of cooperation and competition is an important mechanism to solve the problem of border dilemma. Yuan Li [7] obtained the knowledge acquisition and interaction of the competing type to the participant by studying the factors that influence the knowledge acquisition in the competitive environment, thus highlighting the importance of competition and cooperation to the knowledge management. These scholars have put forward their own viewpoints and innovative achievements on knowledge sharing in different environments, but they have not studied the application of BIM technology to the cross-organizational knowledge sharing mechanism in competing environment.…”