產業供應鏈跨組織夥伴化績效與夥伴團隊協調模式之探討

A Study on the Performance of Interorganizational Partnering and Coordination among Partnering Team in the Industry Supply Chain

組織間夥伴關係之成敗，除程序、工作分配等技術層面問題外，亦與夥伴化過程中「人」與「組織」等行為面問題高度相關。本文以組織協調理論為依據，探討台灣企業供應鏈夥伴關係之深化度、合作慨況、以及「跨組織夥伴團隊」協調模式之演化。研究結果顯示，台灣大型製造業多數已加入供應鏈夥伴合作行列，且一半以上(56.6%)之參與時間超過六年；而夥伴關係越深化，合作績效越佳，組織間之依賴性亦會隨著深化度而顯著提高，顯示供應鏈夥伴關係是值得深耕的。另外，在建立一合作活動之過程中，完全以任務為主之跨組織團隊協調模式並不適用，須有非正式溝通並加入人際互動，如對夥伴表示關懷與鼓勵，才能提高協調績效。最主要，在期初能兼顧任務及非正式工作指示，期中能以任務及群體與私下兩溝通方式為導向，期後能任務與人際角色、正式與非正式溝通並融者，是最適切之跨組織團隊協調模式。

Industrial supply chain partnering is a long-term, inter-organizational relationship committed between two or more organizations for mutual benefits. Its success depends not only on the technical issues, but also on the behaviors of the partnering team who actually conduct the inter-organizational activities. Through frequent communication and collaboration, the team, made of employees from different organizations, maintains the functions of mutual routines. The purpose of the study has two folds. The first is to examine the supply chain partnership in Taiwan, including its current status, and the effects in relation to the duration of a firm in partnering. The second purpose is to explore the coordination modes among the partnering teams during collaboration in a particular program. The analysis is based on a questionnaire survey responded by Taiwan’s Top 1000 enterprises. Of the 160 valid questionnaires returned, ninety-seven respondents, approximately 61%, indicate an experience in supply chain partnering and therefore are chosen as the sample firms. However, as the paper has two main purposes, one is for a firm’s effects through supply chain partnership, and the other is for a team member’s personal impression toward a particular partnering program, the questionnaire is thus designed for retrieving the separate units of analysis. Using a self-chosen scale, the results indicate that approximately 11% of the sample enterprises have about two years of experience in supply chain partnering, followed by 22% of four years, and 65% of eight years on average. The inter-organizational dependence and collaborative benefits, including cost reduction, operations improvement, technology exchange, quality upgrade, and overall competitiveness, grow significantly with the length of partnering. In other words, it may require two or more years to build up a rudimentary supply chain partnership and fourfold of the time to stabilize the relationship; mainly, the value of supply chain partnership could be increased tremendously as the investment time is lengthened. The results also show a relationship between the type of partner and the length of partnering; those indicating customers as their partners have been in a partnered chain for a longer time than those indicating suppliers as their partners. This may suggest that those in the upper part of a chain, such as suppliers, depend more on supply chain partnership and gain more benefits than those in the lower part of a chain due to, for example, their proactive pursuit of stable consumer orders as recommended in supply chain theory. The second part of the paper discusses the change of the coordination modes among the partnering team during negotiation of a joint program. According to the theory in organization and team management, the modes are derived based on the two dimensions of “role” and “means” adopted by team members for internal collaboration. The role is defined as the extent to which one focuses on either the task or people relationship for teamwork, and the means as the extent to which one uses either the formal meeting or the informal/private way in communication. Collaboration, power, and dependence among the partnered organizations are external influences, and therefore are treated as the contextual variables in the analysis. As a partnering project is often accomplished across a long term of time, the team members could be changed frequently during the process, which makes it difficult for the questionnaire approach to track the team members from the beginning to the end of the project. Due to the limit, the study uses a discrete, self-perceived approach, which asks the respondents to answer the stages – early, middle and late – that they participate in to connect the time and the coordinating experience. Among the 97 valid questionnaires, 73 responded participating on the team during the beginning planning stage, 65 in the middle negotiation stage, and 76 in the final execution stage of a particular partnering program. The results reveal that a purely task-oriented mode is not sufficient for teamwork across the process. Informal communication and people roles have to be entailed for better cooperation. Specifically, a mode evolving with the following patterns: a task role with informal guidance in the beginning, a task role with both formal and informal communications in the middle, and an integrated pattern composed of all essences – task and people as well as formal and informal communications – in the late stage, seems to have the best coordinating effect. In addition, phone calls, as a tool in team contacting, are used more frequently in informal communication than face-to-face dealing; nonetheless, both approaches seem commonly used by the integrated mode. The findings suggest that informal communications have a better coordinating effect than formal meetings across different teamwork stages; the formal approach, including regular meetings, has to be incorporated with the informal contact for better effect. Finally, the collaboration climate would increase with time as the teamwork continues, which would further affect positively on the coordination.