What are the gaps in knowledge that exist between a desired level of performance and the actual level of performance?

To accelerate and improve the efficacy of new product development (NPD), some companies have turned to collaborating with supply chain partners in order to generate ideas and better manage the development process (Pihlajamaa et al., 2017; Sjoerdsma and van Weele, 2015; Yan et al., 2017). Specifically, leveraging buyer-supplier relationships in an integrated NPD approach has long been recognized in the purchasing literature as a source of improved NPD performance (Birou and Fawcett, 1994; Burt and Soukup, 1985; Hartley et al., 1997; Hoegl and Wagner, 2005; Mikkelsen and Johnsen, 2019; Parker et al., 2008; Picaud-Bello et al., 2019; Primo and Amundson, 2002; Yan and Dooley, 2014; Yan and Nair, 2016). Unilever, for example, reports that 69% of innovations come from collaborations with suppliers (Brachtendorf et al., 2017). Unfortunately, as powerful and productive as buyer-supplier integrated NPD collaborations can be, few companies have been able to consistently exploit them for competitive advantage over time (Allred et al., 2011). Given that innovation is the lifeblood of every organization, investigating factors that influence success in buyer-supplier integrated NPD collaborations is both timely and relevant (Oke et al., 2013; Suurmond et al., 2020).

Yan and Dooley (2014: p.60) define collaboration as a “… process through which parties with diverse interests and interdependent resources interact to search for solutions to problems that go beyond their own limited vision of what is possible”. Hoegl and Wagner (2005: p.533) describe buyer-supplier collaboration as “… fostering a cooperative rather than a competitive working atmosphere” and that it “… implies the participation of both buyer and supplier members in decision-making processes”. While collaboration in buyer-supplier relationships has been shown to be effective (Hartley et al., 1997; Mikkelsen and Johnsen, 2019; Pihlajamaa et al., 2017; Primo and Amundson, 2002; Yan and Dooley, 2014), results across all studies are not entirely conclusive (Hoegl and Wagner, 2005; Suurmond et al., 2020) and suggest that more collaboration is not necessarily always better (Das et al., 2006; Sting et al., 2019; Yan and Dooley, 2013).

Grayson and Ambler (1999), for example, use the term ‘dark side’ to refer to the negative consequences of opportunism, loss of objectivity and rising expectations that can emerge in long-term business relationships. Purchasing research adopted the ‘dark side’ term in studies of deep buyer-supplier relationships (Rossetti and Choi, 2005; Villena et al., 2011), highlighting the complex nature of balancing tradeoffs inherent in differing levels of buyer-supplier collaboration. Since firms themselves are each unique and bring to the table their own unique resources, histories and capabilities, it stands to reason that firms will not share the same cost/benefit tradeoffs associated with shared collaboration. This can lead to each firm desiring and pursuing differing levels of collaboration in an integrated NPD project; as a result, desired levels of collaboration may not align with actual levels of collaboration achieved in a buyer-supplier dyad. The resulting collaboration expectation gaps (CEG), we argue, can attenuate performance in buyer-supplier relationships. This may be particularly salient in the context of integrated new product development where both risk and reward of collaborative investments are high and where the timing between the investment in collaboration and its subsequent reward is more temporally detached.

Our research seeks to answer the following questions: 1) Does CEG in fact exist in buyer-supplier NPD collaborations? 2) If so, how and why does CEG impact performance? 3) How does CEG emerge across the stages of the NPD project? The existence and relevance of CEG in interfirm relationships has been largely overlooked in extant research. We are not aware of any study that has either defined or operationalized the concept, nor explored its relevance to NPD performance. While the purchasing literature has looked at goal congruence between buyers and suppliers in desired project and product outcomes (Yan and Dooley, 2013), no research has studied goal congruence of collaboration levels nor recognized and studied the gap between actual and desired levels of collaboration and the relevance and impact of such a gap to performance.

This paper extends theory on buyer-supplier relationships in an NPD setting by introducing CEG as an additional relevant factor in understanding effective management of collaboration between firms. Fig. 1 outlines the a priori theoretical framework for understanding CEG that motivated this research. CEG may exist from the perspective of the buying firm, where the level of collaboration achieved with the supplier may or may not align with the buying firm's desired level. CEG could similarly exist from the perspective of the of the supplier firm. In either case, the size of CEG for each firm is a function of the difference between the actual level of collaboration that is shared between the two firms and the desired level of collaboration of each firm. We recognize that CEG may be minimal or nonexistent for one firm (where actual versus desired levels align) while simultaneously being large and significant for the other firm. In addition to existing across different levels of analysis, CEG may also exist across differing contexts of collaborative activities such as in manufacturing planning and forecasting, inventory management, logistics and/or in new product development, to name a few. Given the broad domains where CEG may exist, we narrow our focus of this study to CEG from the perspective of the buying firm in the context of integrated NPD and leave other contexts as opportunities for future research and extension. The solid versus dotted lines in Fig. 1 help delineate the scope of this paper.

While Fig. 1 highlights that differences between desired levels of collaboration between two firm are a form of goal congruence, we are careful to note that CEG is different from the goal congruence construct since CEG is an expression of the difference between actual and desired levels of collaboration, while collaboration goal congruence is an expression of the alignment between desired levels of collaboration between the two firms. While CEG is not a form of goal congruence, a lack of collaboration goal congruence can contribute and give rise to CEG. It is likely that increased differences in desired levels of collaboration between two firms would result in increased likelihood of CEG existing for either or possibly both firms. As is shown Fig. 1, our study focuses on CEG from the buyer perspective and leaves the study of collaboration goal congruence and its impact on CEG as future research opportunities.

Given the nascent nature of our line of inquiry, we employed a case study research methodology to observe CEG in real-world situations so that we could better observe and understand the ‘how’ and ‘why’ mechanisms that may link CEG to integrated new product development performance. We conducted six in-depth case studies (Eisenhardt, 1989) of integrated new product development projects using a purposeful sample that spans high and low levels of project performance. Our findings confirm the existence of CEG and suggest that its existence and magnitude impacts NPD performance. Additionally, collaboration transparency emerged through the research as another important concept related to CEG and therefore merits our attention. Collaboration transparency is observed in a buyer-supplier dyad when those firms exhibit understanding and appreciation for the motivations (benefits, risks, costs) that underpin collaborative action for the dyad.

Extant research on social dilemmas provides a theoretical lens that helps explain why CEG exist and why collaboration transparency is a relevant construct in understanding how firms can deal with CEG. In the following section we discuss the theoretical foundations of this research and the methodology employed. We then present a cross-case analysis identifying patterns that emerged across the case studies. Lastly, we put forward a proposed theoretical model and propositions that can help extend the findings of our research, thus laying the foundation for a future stream of research focused on CEG and collaboration transparency across various contexts and across differing units of analyses.

Literature review

The theoretical underpinnings needed to understand the relationship between CEG and integrated NPD project performance begin with the resource based view of the firm and in its related theories of the relational view of the firm. These theories help explain why firms engage in joint NPD with partner firms in the first place. What these theories do not explain, however, is why collaboration does not always work and why higher levels of collaboration in NPD might not always be desired. Social

Methodology

While the extant theories cited combine to theoretically predict both the existence and relevance of CEG to integrated NPD projects, little is known regarding the nature of CEG or its relevance to performance. Further, if there is in fact a relationship between CEG and NPD project performance, little knowledge exists regarding the mechanisms that cause that relationship. Case research is best suited to address our research questions since these questions focus more on the exploratory ‘what’,

Cross-case analysis

Table 4 provides a proof quote overview of the actual collaboration activities experienced across each phase of the NPD project for all six projects. Fig. 4, meanwhile, provides an overview of the CEG reported for each case and across all stages of the NPD project for that case along with an overview score (high/low) of the collaboration transparency observed and also the performance scores assigned by respondents according to the categories of innovation, execution and customer impact.

Propositions and conclusion

Based on the empirical findings in the six case studies, we conclude that CEG do exist and that both the size of the gaps and collaboration transparency are real and relevant phenomenon in interfirm relationships. We also observe that these two concepts appear to be correlated with each other and with integrated NPD project performance. Inspection of our case data both across cases and over time lead us to posit that collaboration transparency plays an important role in the emergence and

CRediT author statement

Hugo A. DeCampos: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal Analysis, Writing – Original Draft, Review & Editing. Stanley E. Fawcett: Supervision, Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal Analysis. Steven A. Melnyk: Supervision, Conceptualization, Formal Analysis, Resources.

Declaration of competing interest

None.

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