Reviewing and conceptualizing supplier development Sadaat Ali Yawar Department of Marketing, Operations and Systems, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and Stefan Seuring Chair of Supply Chain Management, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany Abstract Purpose – The literature on supplier development (SD) is mostly fragmented, and very little research offers insights on the interrelations of the critical elements of SD. This research aims to evaluate the significance of SD and reconceptualise it by identifying and linking the key constructs and items of SD. Design/methodology/approach – A structured literature review of SD literature was performed, and it was followed by conducting a contingency analysis of defined constructs and the items of SD. Applying a literature review and contingency analysis allows assessing the degree to which core constructs and their operational items are addressed in the SD literature. Findings – Our findings show that a high degree of interrelations exists among enablers, relationships and supplier development strategies (SDS), of which, only indirect SDS drives the performance outcomes. However, interrelations between the individual items of the main categories of SD remain unexplored. Research limitations/implications – The proposed revised framework reveals significant research gaps in SD and calls for a thorough examination of the topic. Originality/value – The key contribution of the paper is reconceptualising SD and contributing to the theoretical development of SD. Keywords Supplier development strategies (SDS), Direct and indirect SDS, Performance outcomes, Buyer– supplier relationships Paper type Literature review 1. Introduction Managing buyer–supplier relationships is important in dealing with uncertainty and disruption in supply chains (Friedl and Wagner, 2012; Routroy and Pradhan, 2013). One way to deal with the risk of uncertainties is to improve the capabilities of the suppliers (Yawar and Seuring, 2018). Buying firms engage in SD activities to build the capabilities of resource scarce suppliers, and in doing so improve the supply chain competitiveness and buyer-supplier performance (Jajja et al., 2016; Dalvi and Kant, 2018a, b). Supplier development (SD) is defined as “any effort of a buying firm to increase the performance and/or capabilities of the supplier and meet the buying firm’s short- and long-term supply needs” (Krause and Ellram, 1997). Direct SD requires the commitment of resources by the buying firm (Handfield et al., 2000), whereas indirect SD require nothing or only limited resources. In both cases, the aim is to build stable and long-term relationships with the suppliers, maintain a reliable supplier base and simultaneously improve the supply chain performance (Quayle, 2002; Kannan et al., 2010; Wagner, 2010; Busse et al., 2016). By now, various product and service-based industries are shown to use SD as a buying firm initiative to build a dedicated supplier base to improve their supply chain performance (Wagner, 2006a, b; Krause et al., 2007, Sancha et al., 2015; Yawar and Seuring, 2018). In the recent years, SD has attracted considerable attention from practitioners and researchers due to its potential applications in managing supply chains. However, previous research in SD is dominated by empiricism, and therefore the conceptual and theoretical development of SD has remained abstract. Some studies (Glock et al., 2017; Noshad and Reviewing and conceptualizing supplier development The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/1463-5771.htm Received 14 January 2020 Revised 28 May 2020 Accepted 5 July 2020 Benchmarking: An International Journal © Emerald Publishing Limited 1463-5771 DOI 10.1108/BIJ-01-2020-0018