Managing glitches in collaborative product development with suppliers

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to propose that knowing in practice can be used as a mechanism to enhance social exchange in collaborative new product development (NPD) with suppliers to reduce glitches. Practic00es of inter-organizational knowing should consider the levels of supplier involvement adopted.Design/methodology/approachThis paper studies two opposite situations of supplier involvement in NPD projects, namely, white and black box configurations. This paper adopts a qualitative comparative analysis method to identify necessary and sufficient configurations of knowing in practice in 36 projects from 3 different companies.FindingsSocial exchange is important even when the NPD collaboration is based on contractual relationships as in white and grey box collaborations. There are different combinations of practices for inter-organizational knowing that can limit glitches in each supplier configuration. This paper proposes a theoretical model that explains these relationships and contributions to the reduction of glitches.Originality/valueThis paper combines social exchange theory with knowing in practice in the supplier involvement context. The theoretical model contributes to the understanding of knowing in practice in white and black box configurations.