The formation mechanism of business-to-business relationship commitment and its effects on alliance performance in supply chain

Relationship commitment has increasingly received attention from scholars and practitioners in recent years. However, the knowledge of what influences relationship commitment is still very limited. The formation mechanism of business-to-business relationship commitment in supply chain is examined in this paper. Based on the investigation among Chinese enterprises, Firstly, the results show the factors which influence on the formation of business-to-business relationship commitment, The characteristics of supplier include supplier´s capacity, products, person and so on, The relation characteristics between manufacturer and supplier include experience, mutual interdependence, trust and power; Second, relationship commitment can be divided into three dimensions: normative relationship commitment, instrumental relationship commitment and emotional commitment, and the antecedents we discussed above impacts these three dimensions in different ways; Third, relationship commitment have positive efforts on relational stability in supply chain, and then positively affects the alliance performance.