A Model of Military Supply Outsourcing Success: A Client/Vendor Relationship Perspective

In order to improve efficiency and effectiveness, military organization recently begins its supply outsourcing on some material items. However, as not so much literature emphasizes Taiwan’s military logistics and current military outsourcing studies place little attentions on client/vendor relationship, these highlight more research efforts on the military outsourcing, especially for the relationship-related issues in military outsourcing system. Drawing upon the literature in both commercial context and defense context, this research proposes a tentative conceptual model to answer the following questions: (1) what determines client/vendor relationship quality in a military supply outsourcing system; (2) why relationship quality can be a key predictor of military supply outsourcing success; and (3) how contingency and organizational variables can have the moderating effects on the relationship between relationship quality and military supply outsourcing success. Our tentative conceptual model has nine research constructs: relationship, structure, interdependence, compatibility, human factor, relationship quality, military supply outsourcing success, contingency variables, and organizational variables. To answer the research questions and get insights into the little known phenomenon, the case study research method is selected to accomplish the research goals. Based on case study findings,we refine our tentative conceptual model in which there are eight research constructs and seven propositions, providing an advanced understanding of various relationships in military supply outsourcing system and a basis framework for the future research.