Improving operational performance through knowledge exchange with customers

Drawing upon a knowledge-based view of the supply chain, this study analyses the antecedents and consequences of tacit and explicit knowledge transfer, from the supplier's standpoint. The proposed conceptual model is tested using survey data from a sample of 218 Canadian manufacturers. Results show that the exchange of tacit and explicit knowledge in the context of a relationship between a supplier and a customer has a positive impact on the supplier's operational performance. As expected, tacit knowledge exchange appears to have a stronger impact on performance than explicit knowledge exchange. Results also confirm the importance of the level of integration and inter-firm trust for the exchange of both types of knowledge. Although many studies of knowledge transfer in the supply chain have been published to date, no empirical study has specifically examined the simultaneous effect of both types of knowledge.