Interpersonal Boundary Spanning for Supplier Integration in Complex NPD

Abstract

Managers often express a desire for better new-product development (NPD) through supplier integration but are just as often unsure how to bring this about and so underutilize a buy strategy or even forgo it altogether. This article argues that integrating suppliers’ design teams in complex NPD requires addressing the fundamental need in these relations for mutual transparency amongst the actors such that they may adaptively substitute knowledge exchanges for their inability to specify otherwise the finished product and subsystem designs. Reporting on a case study of a jet-aircraft development project, lower level boundary spanners are shown to enable this adaptive coordination by selectively deploying from amongst three different boundary-spanning modes to coordinate for the kind of knowledge flow necessary to the situation at hand. Formalization, colocation, and buyer cross-functionality are found to be contingencies important to one or other of these modes. This article offers implications for how better to coordinate a buy strategy for complex NPD, taking also into account the scope of supplier involvement and the level of innovation in the project.