A Review on Antecedents as Key Enablers for Supplier Buyer Relationship (SBR)

Abstract

In modern day supply chains collaboration is of extreme importance to achieve proper integration among business partners as it drives overall performance in a supply chain. One of the key phenomena in a successful supply chains is Supplier Buyer Relationship (SBR). This paper therefore attempts to expand the knowledge of the key antecedents in enabling Supplier Buyer Relationships and to critically evaluate the most common out of them in a successful Supplier Buyer Relationship. By understanding the key enablers in SBR a business can create sustainable relationships with suppliers, which will succor conquering positive outcomes and competitive advantages. A comprehensive literature review was done by searching for the exact phrase of ‘‘supplier buyer relationship'' in the literature available using and was focused on SBR definitions, underlying theories, and its antecedents. In the article author reviews Social exchange Theory (SET), Resource Based View (RBV) and Transactional Cost Economics (TCE) in a novel theoretical lens to reflect the supplier-buyer relationship. Findings indicated that good communication would help to sustain and build up a mutual relationship that benefits both suppliers and buyers, cooperation is important to reduce more conflict occurrence and able to maintain a long term relationship between buyers and suppliers with competitive pressure commonly present in modern day businesses for the success of firms performance, commitment is one exchange variable which buying firm's desire to continue a relationship with vendor and effective buyer-supplier relationship generates by building up the trust between suppliers and buyers, further in summary 3C's (Communication, Commitment & Cooperation) coupled with Trust strongly enables robust and strong SBR. As modern-day supply chains moving to extended collaborative supply chains it is quite worthwhile doing further research on this topic to find out the antecedents of a good sustainable SBR in specific contexts like the FMCG sector.