The role of integrative capabilities in involving suppliers in New Product Development: a knowledge integration perspective.

Early Supplier Involvement (ESI) aims to facilitate New Product Development (NPD) success and create competitive advantage for the purchasing firm. Unfortunately, empirical results are inconsistent in verifying the linkage between ESI and NPD success. To solve this paradox, this paper views ESI as a knowledge integration process and examines the role of the purchasing firm's integrative capabilities in the process. Competing models are proposed and tested. The results demonstrate that NPD success depends not only on the supplier's knowledge and expertise, but also on the purchasing firm's integrative capabilities to absorb knowledge and increase efficiency of knowledge integration.