Opening up innovation in buyer-supplier relationships: Empirical evidence of antecedents and its effect on supply chain competence

This paper focuses on coupled processes with key suppliers, which we call supply chain-open innovativeness relationships. Drawing on social exchange theory, we identify some antecedents of this orientation in the relationship an organization can maintain with its key supplier. We measure some of these constructs in terms of gap by comparing perceptions with previous expectations. We also analyze open innovation performance in terms of competence improvement. Both the proposed model and the hypotheses were tested on a sample of 286 firms. The results confirm that trust, commitment, and procedural justice enable the existence of a supply chain-open innovativeness relationship and the effect of this relationship on supply chain competence. We also confirm the positive effect of supply chain competence on firm performance.