The strategic context of customer‐supplier partnerships: evidence from a global survey

Explores strategic and structural contingencies surrounding customer‐supplier partnerships, in a global sample of 218 firms from the engineering sector. Collaborative practice is analysed along two dimensions, namely operations integration and co‐design. The former concerns the management of logistics (physical and information flows), and the latter refers to suppliers’ involvement in the customers’ product development process. In particular, it was found that the degree of vertical integration, the level of innovation effort and the kind of improvement priorities clearly influence the adoption of partnerships, more than other classical contingencies relating to country, industries and firms’ size. Also, it was apparent that such strategic factors affect operations integration and co‐design practice differently.