While the number and importance of joint innovation projects between suppliers and their customers continue to rise, the literature has yet to resolve a key question—do embedded ties with customers help or hurt supplier innovation? Drawing on both the tie strength and knowledge literatures, we theorize that embedded ties interact with supplier and customer innovation knowledge to influence supplier innovation. In a sample of 157 Dutch business-to-business innovation relationships, we observe that embedded ties weaken how much suppliers benefit from customer innovation knowledge due to worries about customer opportunism (the dark side of embedded ties). However, we uncover three moderating relationship and governance features that allow suppliers to overcome these dark-side effects and even increase innovation (the bright side of embedded ties). Finally, although we predicted a bright-side effect, we find that embedded ties neither help nor hurt the supplier to leverage its own innovation knowledge in the relationship.

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Erasmus Research Institute of Management
hdl.handle.net/1765/22813
ERIM Report Series Research in Management
ERIM report series research in management Erasmus Research Institute of Management
Erasmus Research Institute of Management

Noordhoff, C., Kyriakopoulos, K., Moorman, C., Pauwels, P., & Dellaert, B. (2011). The Bright Side and Dark Side of Embedded Ties In Business-to-Business Innovation (No. ERS-2011-008-MKT). ERIM report series research in management Erasmus Research Institute of Management. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/22813