A comparative analysis of EDI integration in US and Japanese automobile suppliers

This paper examines EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) integration in US and Japanese automobile suppliers. The paper constructs several hypotheses based on our literature survey, and tests these hypotheses in 76 US suppliers and 93 Japanese suppliers. Our study found that: Japanese firms were more likely to make relation-specific investments into their suppliers than the US firms were. Japanese firms were likely to receive parts from their suppliers more frequently than the US firms were. Japanese firms were more likely to schedule their production right before their actual production than the US firms were. US firms were more likely to emphasise expanding their transactional bases in using EDI than Japanese firms were. US firms were more likely to integrate their Customers by EDI, while Japanese firms were more likely to integrate their suppliers by EDI. EDI integration had a positive impact on EDI effectiveness in the USA, while there was no such relationship between EDI integration and EDI effectiveness in Japan.