Spark a Fire? Buyers’ Social Power and Alliance Governance

Adequate governance mechanisms underlie the success of buyer-supplier alliances. But what further relational factors underlie their implementation? This paper follows the assumption that different power sources among firms directly influences the governance mechanisms and indirectly performance. Our model contains four power sources and three governance mechanisms. We test our model using structural equation modeling on a sample of 250 European firms. Results show that the suppliers’ perception of buyers’ coercive power emphasizes contractual governance and buyer directives but reduces the use of relational norms. Reward power is only meaningful to contractual governance. Expert power underlies buyer directives and relational norms. Relational norms build on referent power as well. Our managerial implications take advantage from post hoc analyses, a clustering of power types and an analysis of the indirect performance impact of power via the governance mechanisms.

Autor:

Clauß, Thomas & Bouncken, Ricarda