Abstract—Integrating suppliers’ knowledge and expertise in
new product development becomes increasingly important for
manufacturing firms’ product success. Most studies adapt the
manufacturing firms’ standpoint and research the benefits of
manufacturing firms in new product development. Relatively
little attention has been given to the suppliers' perspective in
their research. This paper studies suppliers in working
partnerships with manufacturing firms in new product
development. A model is proposed to study the impact of
relationship strength on the tacit knowledge transfer from
manufacturing firms to suppliers in new product development.
It also investigates the impact of tacit knowledge transfer on
supplier new product performance.
Index Terms—Supplier, tacit knowledge transfer, new
product development.
Yushan Zhao is with the College of Business and Economics, University
of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI 53190 USA (e-mail:
zhaoy@uww.edu).
Cite:Yushan Zhao, "Tacit Knowledge Transfer from Manufacturing Firms to Suppliers in New Product Development: A Study of Suppliers," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 3, no. 5, pp. 571-574, 2013.