Adoption of electronic data interchange: the role of buyer-supplier relationships

This paper examines electronic data interchange (EDI) adoption and integration by US automobile industry suppliers. The paper constructs several hypotheses from the authors' literature survey and interviews with automotive industry managers, and tests these hypotheses using data from first- and second-tier automobile suppliers in the U.S. Their study shows: (1) the higher the frequency of transactions and the higher the percent sales to a customer, the more likely a supplier was to adopt EDI; (2) "buyer's push" seemed to be the most significant reason for suppliers' EDI adoption; (3) factors affecting EDI adoption were different from those affecting EDI integration and success; (4) managerial proactiveness seemed to be the most significant factor for EDI integration and success; and (5) the resource-dependency approach seemed to be more suitable than the transaction-cost approach for explaining EDI adoption.