Impacts of the Supplier´ Role on Knowledge Assignment and Knowledge Sharing in the Supply Chain

Previous research has emphasized the importance of knowledge sharing in supply chains. However, there leaves the impacts of heterogeneousness of suppliers´ roles having not been deeply analyzed. Following the research on supplier´s role and knowledge sharing in supply chains, this paper discusses the influence of supplier´s role on knowledge assignment/sharing between the assembler and the supplier. At first, we focus on the natures of product parts and analyze the quantity of technological knowledge about the parts the assembler should know. Then, we analyze the assignment of the architectural knowledge (about how to assembly parts to a final product) and the component-specific knowledge (about how to produce a part) in the chain. Finally, we construct the supplier´s roles by both the nature of parts he produces and the extent he involves in the part development, and analyze the relationship between the supplier´s role and knowledge sharing in the chain..