The impact of collaboration scope on inter-organizational controls and boundary spanners’ relational skills.
Résumé
The current research analyses the effect of inter-organizational management controls on boundary spanners’ relational skills and firm performance, according to the scope (breadth or depth) of buyer–supplier relationships. Drawing on survey data from 232 buyer and supplierfirms engaged in bilateral collaborations for R&D, production, logistics, marketing/distribution or after-sales, this research confirms the need to account for collaboration characteristics. In deeper collaborations, relational skills are critical, and management controls have a negative moderating effect. In broad collaborations, the situation is reversed, and the use of management controls can compensate for a lesser influence of relational skills.