The relationship between a firm and its supply chain has been well studied, however, the association between the position of firms in complex supply chain networks and their performance has not been adequately investigated. This is primarily due to insufficient availability of empirical data on large-scale networks. To addresses this gap in the literature, we investigate the relationship between embeddedness patterns of individual firms in a supply network and their performance using empirical data from the automotive industry. In this study, we devise three measures that characterize the embeddedness of individual firms in a supply network. These are namely: centrality, tier position, and triads. Our findings caution us that centrality impacts individual performance through a diminishing returns relationship. The second measure, tier position, allows us to investigate the concept of tiers in supply networks because we find that as networks emerge, the boundaries between tiers become unclear. Performance of suppliers degrade as they move away from the focal firm (i.e., Toyota). The final measure, triads, investigates the effect of buying and selling to firms that supply the same customer, portraying the level of competition and cooperation in a supplier’s network. We find that increased coopetition (i.e., cooperative competition) is a performance enhancer, however, excessive complexity resulting from being involved in both upstream and downstream coopetition results in diminishing performance. These original insights help understand the drivers of firm performance from a network perspective and provide a basis for further research.

企业及其供应链之间的关系已得到很好的研究，但是，企业在复杂的供应链网络中的地位与其绩效之间的关联尚未得到充分研究。这主要是由于在大型网络上经验数据的可用性不足。为了解决文献中的这一空白，我们使用汽车行业的经验数据研究了供应网络中各个公司的嵌入模式与其绩效之间的关系。在这项研究中，我们设计了三种方法来表征供应网络中各个公司的嵌入性。它们是：中心性，层级位置和三合会。我们的发现提醒我们，集中度会通过收益关系的递减影响个人绩效。第二项指标，层位，允许我们研究供应网络中的层级概念，因为我们发现随着网络的出现，层级之间的界限变得不清楚。供应商的绩效随着他们离开焦点公司（例如，丰田）而下降。最终措施是三合会，调查了向提供相同客户的公司进行买卖的效果，描绘了供应商网络中的竞争和合作水平。我们发现，增加的竞合（即合作竞争）可以提高绩效，但是，由于参与上游和下游竞合所导致的过度复杂性会导致性能下降。这些原始见解有助于从网络角度了解公司绩效的驱动力，并为进一步研究提供基础。