In business markets, firms increasingly participate in new product development (NPD) activities that they outsource to suppliers. Such buyer participation can be complicated by relationship multiplexity—that is, the buyer may simultaneously be a competitor, supplier, and/or partner of the supplier firm. Drawing on role theory, we theorize how relationship multiplexity moderates the effect of buyer participation on project success. We analyze 140 NPD projects that were executed by a contract R&D organization in the aerospace industry and find that buyer participation lowers the buyer's and the supplier's perceptions of project success for buyer‐as‐supplier multiplexity. Buyer participation increases the perceptions of project success in the case of buyer‐as‐partner multiplexity, but only when these partnerships are emergent, as opposed to engineered. Buyer participation decreases the buyer's perception of project success for relationships featuring buyer‐as‐competitor multiplexity but does not affect the supplier's perception in the case of buyer‐as‐competitor multiplexity. Our results provide tactical insights as to when buyer participation helps or hurts.

中文翻译：

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买方参与外包新产品开发项目：关系多重性的作用

在商业市场中，公司越来越多地参与他们外包给供应商的新产品开发（NPD）活动。这种购买者的参与可能由于关系的多重性而变得复杂，也就是说，购买者可能同时是供应商公司的竞争对手，供应商和/或合伙人。基于角色理论，我们对关系多元性如何缓和买方参与对项目成功的影响进行了理论分析。我们分析了由航空航天业的合同研发组织执行的140个NPD项目，发现买方参与降低了买方和供应商对买方-供应商多元化项目成功的看法。在买方与合作伙伴多元化的情况下，买方的参与会增加对项目成功的看法，但只有当这些伙伴关系出现时，而不是工程。买方参与降低了买方对竞争者多重性的关系中买方对项目成功的看法，但在买方对竞争者多重性的情况下不影响供应商的看法。我们的结果提供了有关买方参与何时会产生帮助或损害的战术见解。