Developing a sustainable buyer-supplier collaboration: an approach based on Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory

This paper aims to identify the most relevant elements of best practice for successful collaboration between buyers and suppliers over the long term. Many papers have addressed best practices aiming to create value through innovation, co-innovation, and open innovation. Despite the abundance of this useful literature, practitioners are still missing more concrete ideas or help allowing them to take more relevant decisions and ensure more sustainable collaboration. In this paper, we focus on the element level enabling successful best collaborative practice in value-creating collaborations. We develop an approach based on Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory distinguishing motivation and hygiene factors. We use grounded theory relying on a qualitative exploratory methodology to identify the five most relevant motivation factors – including sharing investments, risks, industrial property, and economic results – and hygiene factors – consisting of respecting the partners, engagements, and payment period – depending on the macro context in which the collaboration is built.