Bridges over troubled water: suppliers as connective nodes in global supply networks Poul Houman Andersen a, * , Poul Rind Christensen b,1 a Department of International Business, The Aarhus School of Business, Fuglesangs Alle ´ 4, DK-8210 A ˚ rhus V, Denmark b CESFO (Centre for Small Enterprise Studies), The University of Southern Denmark, Engstien 1, DK-6000 Kolding, Denmark Abstract Increasingly, industrial selling and purchasing is embedded in supplier networks extending national borders. The internationalisation of supply activities adds considerable complexity to the coordination tasks performed by suppliers. Traditionally, supply chain management was upstream-oriented, focusing on the leading contractor’s supply chain management. However, the increased demand for flexibility echoes down in supply network, decentralising the coordination task. We focus on subcontractors as connective nodes in supply networks and outline how coordinative roles are linked to the diversity of exchange nodes. We develop a typology for the coordinating roles taken on by subcontractors and use case studies to ground our explorative efforts empirically. D 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Subcontracting; Supply chain management; Internationalisation; Networks 1. Introduction The demand for flexible response to end customer demands has led to a strong focus on the flexible special- isation, which takes place in large-scale enterprises serving these final markets. Global competitive pressures, along with the increasing pace of technological development, are frequently seen as salient market realities to which firms must adhere. Together, these factors constitute what has been labelled an industrial divide, to which flexible special- isation seems to be a possible answer (Storper and Saias, 1997; Dicken, 1992). Increasingly, industrial selling and purchasing activities are embedded in supplier networks that extend national borders. The internationalisation of supply activities involv- ing different national business contexts adds considerable complexity to the coordination tasks performed by suppliers (Fletcher and Nigel, 2001; Kinder, 2003). Traditionally, the organisation of supply chain manage- ment has been based on an upstream point of view, with a central focus on the leading contractor’s supply chain management. However, the demand for flexibility in market response, as well as in the layout of production processes, echoes down the different layers of the supply network. An increasing number of researchers are changing their focus from final producers’ management of integrated supply chains to concentrate on the concept of supply networks. Like supply chains, supply networks acknowledge the importance of understanding the production and coordina- tion activities carried out and the interfirm division of labour associated with it. However, rather than focusing on a specific set of actors, supply networks are characterized by sets of purposeful and connected exchange relationships, which may change over time as specific actors are involved, deactivated, or reactivated in the performance of production tasks. Unlike the implicit assumption found in most supply chain management literature, networks are not defined and assembled by the final producer but hold self-organizing features and evolve over time. In this article, we therefore focus on the role of subcontractors as connective nodes in supply networks. For the purpose of the analyses carried out in this contribution, a subcontractor is defined as a company, which supplies components, based on buyer specifications and integrated in the buyers’ own products or services. The buyer is defined as a final assembler, including contractors designating the entire production task to the 0148-2963/$ – see front matter D 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2003.04.002 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +45-89-48-66-30; fax: +45-89-48-61-25. E-mail addresses: poa@asb.dk (P.H. Andersen), prc@sam.sdu.dk (P.R. Christensen). 1 Tel.: +45-65-50-13-67; fax: +45-65-50-13-13. Journal of Business Research 58 (2005) 1261 – 1273