Leveraging IT resources, embeddedness, and dependence: A supplier's perspective on appropriating benefits with powerful buyers

• DOI: 10.1016/j.im.2015.06.008
• Publication Date: 2015-06-18T02:42:40Z
• Authors: Michael T. Lee; Kit Scott
• Keywords: Embeddedness; Relational view; Appropriation; Information Sharing

Supplier-buyer relationships often exhibit power differentials and dependence.Relation-specific IT, embeddedness and dependence lead to supplier benefits.Embeddedness does not result in a supplier appropriating benefits.A supplier must use a buyer's dependence on a supplier to appropriate benefits. The relationships between suppliers and buyers are often simultaneously characterized by power differentials and dependence. In such relationships, a powerful buyer is able to benefit more from the relationship than the supplier. We examine how a supplier can strengthen its use of relation-specific information technology (IT) with embeddedness to appropriate its share of relational benefits. We developed and tested a model of supplier relation-specific IT use, embeddedness, and buyer's dependence on a supplier. The results showed that embeddedness did not lead directly to the sharing of relational benefits; the appropriation of relational benefits is instead derived from buyer dependence.