650 Management und unterstützende Tätigkeiten
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Megatrends, affecting multiple aspects of future society, economy, and technology, drive today's business world. They are expected to impact all areas in companies and will, therefore, most likely occur in business negotiations. Although several studies address future developments of different business divisions, the megatrends' impact on negotiations has, thus far, not been analyzed. We designed a model including the three megatrends, i.e., globalization and economic shift, digitalization and new technologies, and demographic and social change, which have main effects on specific negotiation aspects. Our study combined an online survey and expert interviews with negotiation practitioners to provide a first broad view of how megatrends affect future business negotiations. The results confirm our model and reveal a close connection of megatrends and single negotiation aspects. Among others, we examine an orientation toward global partners, an increased interconnection through various electronic systems, as well as two opposite relationship directions - long-term and integrative through strategic cooperation vs. short-term and distributive through competition and new technologies.
The number of alternative suppliers is widely considered to be the most important source of power in supply chains. It is common knowledge that a buying company benefits from an increasing number of suppliers until a marginalization effect occurs. Consequently, a cost-benefit optimum must exist but has not been analyzed in a sufficiently differentiated manner in the literature. Particularly, research has not taken the variety of product groups, which is reflected by the degree of innovation, into account. Using a two-way analysis of variance, this study identifies the cost-benefit optimum for the number of suppliers and analyzes the moderating role of the degree of innovation. The analysis is based on real automotive business-to-business negotiation data. The results reveal that a cost-benefit optimum is reached at a number of three suppliers at the most. Furthermore, the impact of the number of suppliers is higher for innovative products than for more functional products. Purchasing managers can use the findings to determine the optimal size of their supplier choice set.