Purpose

In the wake of the growing popularity of the open innovation approach, leveraging suppliers as external sources of innovation has attracted increasing interest from scholars and practitioners. Successful supplier involvement largely depends on an effective performance measurement process, but both supply chain management and innovation management literature have paid limited attention to this aspect. This paper aims to fill this gap by illustrating how companies measure the performance of the suppliers involved in their innovation projects and what role is played by the purchasing department.

Design/methodology/approach

This study interviews project stakeholders from nine different organizations acting as focal companies in the supply chains of various industries. This paper complements this on-field information with a vast amount of data collected from secondary project documents. Structured data coding and analysis allow us to discuss how companies redesign their performance measurement systems to ease the collaboration with suppliers in innovation and what factors underly these decisions.

Findings

The findings show that, in many cases, supplier performance measurement systems deviate from their typical characteristics to support collaboration in innovation projects. They integrate quantitative and qualitative measures, include contributions from different project stakeholders and are oriented toward high visibility and transparency with suppliers. A more substantial redesign of these systems is favored when purchasing is assigned to strategic project responsibilities and possesses higher absorptive capacity.

Originality/value

The results complement the knowledge for the supply chain management field, where supplier performance measurement systems have been discussed in the context of traditional buyer-supplier relationships, but not comprehensively in innovation projects and not considering the role of purchasing. Findings also contribute to the innovation management literature, which has mostly focused on what aspects need to be measured for innovation partners, rather than how to manage the performance measurement process in practice.

中文翻译：

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协同创新项目中供应商绩效测量系统的特点：采购部门的作用

目的

随着开放式创新方法的日益普及，利用供应商作为外部创新来源已引起学者和从业者越来越多的兴趣。成功的供应商参与很大程度上取决于有效的绩效衡量过程，但供应链管理和创新管理文献对这方面的关注有限。本文旨在通过说明公司如何衡量参与其创新项目的供应商的绩效以及采购部门所扮演的角色来填补这一空白。

设计/方法/方法

本研究采访了来自九个不同组织的项目利益相关者，这些组织是各个行业供应链中的焦点公司。本文用从二级项目文件中收集的大量数据补充了这些现场信息。结构化数据编码和分析使我们能够讨论公司如何重新设计其绩效衡量系统以简化与供应商在创新方面的合作，以及这些决策背后的因素。

发现

研究结果表明，在许多情况下，供应商绩效测量系统偏离了它们的典型特征，以支持创新项目中的协作。它们整合了定量和定性措施，包括来自不同项目利益相关者的贡献，并且面向供应商的高知名度和透明度。当采购被分配到战略项目责任并具有更高的吸收能力时，更倾向于对这些系统进行更实质性的重新设计。

原创性/价值

这些结果补充了供应链管理领域的知识，供应链管理领域的供应商绩效测量系统已经在传统的买卖双方关系的背景下进行了讨论，但在创新项目中并未全面讨论，也没有考虑采购的作用。研究结果也有助于创新管理文献，这些文献主要关注需要为创新合作伙伴衡量哪些方面，而不是如何在实践中管理绩效衡量过程。