Partnership Management, Supply Chain Collaboration, and Firm Innovation Performance: An Empirical Examination

Facing uncertain environments, firms have strived to achieve competitive advantage by partnership management and supply chain collaboration. The objective of the research is to uncover the nature of partnership management and explore its impact on supply chain collaboration and firm innovation performance. The research divides partnership management into three stages: partnership selection, partnership establishment, and partnership sustention. The research constructs the influence mechanism of partnership management on supply chain collaboration and innovation performance. By questionnaire of 133 manufacturing enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta of China, and using SPSS statistical analysis, the empirical results show that partnership selection, partnership establishment, and partnership sustention have significantly positive influence on supply chain collaboration and innovation performance; supply chain collaboration has a complete mediating effect between partnership election, partnership establishment, and innovation performance; and supply chain collaboration has a partial mediating effect between partnership sustention and innovation performance. The research reveals the construct mechanism of firms’ improving innovation performance through partnership management.