Shaping buyer-supplier relationships in manufacturing contexts: Design and test of a contingency model

Although the idea that buyer–supplier partnerships can yield considerable benefits to firms is largely diffused among researchers and practitioners, the approach adopted in this paper is that no ‘‘one best way’’ exists in buyer–supplier relationships, but rather a ‘‘best way’’ for each specific exchange context. Hence, this paper proposes a contingency model for shaping and managing buyer–supplier relationships in manufacturing contexts. In order to test the model, an empirical study was performed on a sample of 45 buyer–supplier relationships within the Italian white goods industry. A three-dimensional performance indicator was computed to compare supplier performance achieved within relations matching the model’s suggestions with those set differently. The results strongly suggest that suppliers involved in relationships set accordingly to the contingency model are likely to enjoy superior performance.