Unraveling the Dimensions of Supplier Involvement and their Effects on NPD Performance: A Meta‐Analysis

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12221
• Author: Jan Dul,Finn Wynstra,Robert Suurmond
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020

UNRAVELING THE DIMENSIONS OF SUPPLIER

INVOLVEMENT AND THEIR EFFECTS ON NPD

PERFORMANCE: A META-ANALYSIS

ROBERT SUURMOND

Maastricht University

FINN WYNSTRA and JAN DUL

Erasmus University

We study the relationship between supplier involvement in new product

development and performance. The current literature is scattered and frag-

mented with studies reporting mixed empirical evidence for a variety of

concepts related to “Early Supplier Involvement.”We conduct a systematic

review and meta-analysis of the existing literature to reconcile conflicted

findings, revise and refine theoretical perspectives, and provide evidence-

based scholarly and practical implications. To achieve these aims, we

unravel the general relationship by considering three factors. First, we

delineate different types of performance outcomes, mainly related to NPD

efficiency (e.g., speed) and NPD effectiveness (e.g., product quality). Sec-

ond, we distinguish between the moment and the extent of supplier

involvement, related to different theoretical perspectives on external

knowledge integration. Third, we disentangle multiple levels of analysis

that are seemingly obscured in the literature, specifically the project and

organizational levels. We find that extensive supplier involvement has pos-

itive effects on NPD efficiency and effectiveness, whereas earlier supplier

involvement only to some degree affects NPD efficiency and not effective-

ness. In conclusion, our meta-analysis based on 11,420 observations from

51 studies provides strong theoretical and practical insights on the impor-

tant phenomenon of supplier involvement.

Keywords: new product development; early supplier involvement; organizational

learning and knowledge; meta-analysis

INTRODUCTION

Developing new products has increasingly become

an interorganizational activity, with focal firms seek-

ing collaboration with external sources of knowledge,

such as suppliers, to enhance their knowledge base

and extend their development capabilities (Hoegl &

Wagner, 2005; Johnsen, 2009; Un, Cuervo-Cazurra, &

Asakawa, 2010). For example, automotive companies

have employed their first-tier suppliers to develop

parts and components for new car models (Clark,

1989; Clark & Fujimoto, 1991; Jacobides, MacDuffie,

& Tae, 2016; Johnsen, 2009). More recently, Boeing

started a collaboration with car seat manufacturer Adi-

ent to develop and manufacture seats to cut delays in

aircraft delivery times (Hepher, 2018). This practice of

integrating upstream supply chain partners in product

development has become known as “Early Supplier

Involvement”: the participation of suppliers in their

customer’s new product development (NPD) projects

(Handfield et al., 1999; Monczka et al., 2000). The

Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank the editors-

in-chief, associate editor, and anonymous reviewers for their

constructive feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. In

addition, the authors acknowledge the comments of participants

at the 2018 IPSERA conference in Athens and seminars at Eind-

hoven University of Technology, Erasmus University Rotterdam,

Maastricht University, and University of Bath.

Volume 56, Number 3

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

26

Journal of Supply Chain Management

2020, 56(3), 26–46

©2020 The Authors. Journal of Supply Chain Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

overall purpose of this paper was to examine the

impact of supplier involvement in new product devel-

opment (NPD) on performance.

While supplier involvement is generally believed to

be beneficial for achieving better new products faster,

prior research –and empirical evidence in particular –

is fragmented and scattered. Contrary to popular

belief, there is as of yet no “overwhelming evidence”

to support the positive effects of supplier involvement

on new product development (cf. Johnsen, 2009,

193). In particular, research employs a divergent and

inconsistent terminology and shows mixed and

heterogeneous results (Eisenhardt & Tabrizi, 1995;

Hartley, Zirger, & Kamath, 1997; Koufteros, Cheng, &

Lai, 2007; White et al., 2008; Yan & Dooley, 2013).

The lack of consensus in the literature warrants a

structured review and meta-analysis of the prior

empirical literature on the relationship between sup-

plier involvement and NPD performance. In conduct-

ing such a review, we consider three factors.

First, almost all of the early literature on supplier

involvement investigated the impacts on lead time,

speed, time-to-market, or development costs, that is,

NPD efficiency (Imai, Nonaka, & Takeushi, 1985;

Clark, 1989; Womack, Jones, & Roos, 1990; Clark &

Fujimoto, 1991; cf. Johnsen, 2009: Tables 1 and 2).

However, subsequent research has included outcomes

related to the newly developed product itself, includ-

ing quality, product target cost, and manufacturability,

that is, NPD effectiveness (Hoegl & Wagner, 2005;

Swink, 1999; Takeishi, 2002; Van Echtelt et al., 2008).

NPD efficiency and NPD effectiveness are two very

different outcomes with likely trade-offs (Langerak &

Hultink, 2006), but prior studies have not adequately

recognized this, nor theorized distinct paths to these

outcomes. We aim to unravel the relationship

between supplier involvement and performance by

clearly distinguishing different (NPD) performance

outcomes.

Second, many different definitions of supplier

involvement exist, with the majority of studies refer-

ring to aspects related to the earliness of involvement

(moment, timing, cf. Bidault, Despres, & Butler,

1998b; LaBahn & Krapfel, 2000; Parker, Zsidisin, &

Ragatz, 2008b; Wynstra & Ten Pierick, 2000) or to

aspects related to the extent of involvement (supplier

development responsibility, design integration, cf.

Clark, 1989; Koufteros, Cheng, & Lai, 2007; Parker,

Zsidisin, & Ragatz, 2008b; Wynstra et al., 2012).

While all these different studies have previously been

reviewed under the general heading of “Early Supplier

Involvement” (Johnsen, 2009), they represent theoret-

ically distinct and practically disparate approaches to

integrating supplier knowledge in the product devel-

opment process (Lichtenthaler & Lichtenthaler, 2009),

as we will review in depth below. Therefore, we also

aim to unravel the relationship between supplier

involvement and performance by providing a concep-

tualization and analysis of the distinct nature of these

two dimensions of involvement and their effects on

performance.

A third and final issue in synthesizing prior research

pertains to differences between levels of analysis that

so far are seldom explicitly acknowledged. In particu-

lar, while the early literature focused almost exclu-

sively on the contribution of suppliers in the context

of a single NPD project, some of the recent literature

has examined the effects of organizational-level sup-

plier involvement practices on overall firm perfor-

mance (e.g., Koufteros, Cheng, & Lai, 2007; Perols

et al., 2013; Wu & Ragatz, 2010). Therefore, as a third

means to rebuild consensus on the relationship

between supplier involvement and performance, we

aim to unravel the relationship between supplier

involvement and performance by clearly distinguish-

ing between the project and organizational levels of

analysis.

To achieve these aims, this paper presents a struc-

tured literature review and meta-analysis of the sup-

plier involvement literature. In order to regain a

fundamental understanding of the literature, such a

review must be conducted at a somewhat more

abstract level than individual studies are able to

achieve. By elaborating a parsimonious model and

empirically analyzing the existing literature, we aim to

inspire and guide future research in the field (Durach

et al., 2017; Leuschner, Rogers, & Charvet, 2013). We

also seek to provide more reliable, evidence-based

managerial advice (Rousseau, Manning, & Denyer,

2008) that goes beyond the adagio “the earlier, the

better,” by focusing on to what extent and when sup-

pliers should be involved in new product develop-

ment (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1995; Johnsen, 2009;

Primo & Amundson, 2002). Finally, we compare the

effects of supplier involvement and customer involve-

ment (in the Discussion) to evaluate the effectiveness

of different approaches to collaboration in NPD

(Chang & Taylor, 2016).

A BRIEF LITERATURE REVIEW

Johnsen (2009, p. 193) sketches the historical devel-

opment of research on supplier involvement and con-

cludes that there is “overwhelming evidence to

support early and extensive supplier involvement as a

key explanatory factor of superior new product perfor-

mance.” We conjecture that a closer inspection of

prior research on supplier involvement, as reported

below, does not show consensus and employs such a

divergence of definitions that the broader picture is

obscured. We describe, in turn, the historical develop-

ment of the field, the unit of analysis and

July 2020

Unraveling Supplier Involvement

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