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