Abstract In buyer-supplier settings, paradoxical (or dualistic) outcomes are often observed. In this paper, we seek to demystify why such puzzling phenomena occur and discourse how firms can better manage their supplier relationships. We argue that any set of dualistic outcomes is basically two manifestations of the same thing—what we refer to as a supplier's learned behavioral pattern. Depending on the buyer's specific relationship strategy, the supplier would learn to behave in a certain way, as it faces two separate—and often competing—business environments: the focal dyad and its extended ties. Adopting the embeddedness lens, we theorize buyer-supplier dyadic embeddedness (BSE) to ascertain the primary (intended) and incidental (unintended) outcomes of buyer strategies toward suppliers. We conceptualize BSE in social and economic dimensions and develop four basic BSE states, dividing each dimension into low and high. Then, we identify four archetypal supplier relationship strategies that correspond with the four basic BSE states and the outcome duality for each strategy type: stability strategy (high social-high economic BSE) inducing relational stability and supplier rigidity, exploitation strategy (low social-high economic) inducing lack of synergy and supplier opportunism, leverage strategy (low social-low economic) inducing relational ambiguity and supplier flexibility, and laissez-faire strategy (high social-low economic) inducing lack of control and supplier innovation. We model each outcome duality mechanism on seemingly unrelated regression (SUR). The empirics come from the survey data collected from a major global automaker and its North American supply base.

中文翻译：

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供应商关系策略和结果二元性：嵌入视角的实证研究

摘要 在买方-供应商环境中，经常观察到自相矛盾（或二元论）的结果。在本文中，我们试图揭开这种令人费解的现象发生的神秘面纱，并讨论公司如何更好地管理其供应商关系。我们认为，任何一组二元结果基本上都是同一事物的两种表现——我们称之为供应商习得的行为模式。根据买方的特定关系策略，供应商将学会以某种方式行事，因为它面临着两个独立的（通常是相互竞争的）商业环境：焦点二元组及其扩展关系。采用嵌入性镜头，我们将买方-供应商二元嵌入 (BSE) 理论化，以确定买方对供应商的策略的主要（预期）和附带（非预期）结果。我们从社会和经济维度对 BSE 进行概念化，并开发了四种基本的 BSE 状态，将每个维度分为低和高。然后，我们确定了与四种基本 BSE 状态和每种策略类型的结果二元性相对应的四种原型供应商关系策略：稳定性策略（高社会高经济 BSE）导致关系稳定性和供应商刚性，开发策略（低社会高经济 BSE）经济）导致缺乏协同和供应商机会主义，杠杆策略（低社会经济）导致关系模糊和供应商灵活性，以及​​自由放任战略（高社会低经济）导致缺乏控制和供应商创新。我们在看似无关的回归 (SUR) 上对每个结果二元机制进行建模。