Questionnaire design

Before questionnaire designed, three times interview have been conducted with three major auto-assemblers (two times by face to face; one by e-mail) (Table 3-1).

The current situation of automobile was realized and part of questionnaire was developed based on the results of the interview (see Part II in Appendix). Interview outline has been sent in advance, which includes the current situation of CSDS, the way to interact, maintain, and collaborate with auto-components manufacturers; what relationship types say competition, co-research and developing, knowledge-sharing and proprietorship exist between them, and the perception of function or performance in the CSDS (Table 3-2).

Table 3-1 The list of preliminary interview

Company name Interviewer Date Contact

Kouzui Motors, LTD. Mr. Chien (Senior general manager of purchasing division )

2009/2/12 Face to face Yulon Nissan Motor

CO.,LTD.

Mr. Fu(Manager of purchasing) 2009/2/27 Face to face China Motors

Corporation

Mr. Yuan(Senior specialist) 2009/2/26 e-mail

Table 3-2 The interview questions outline Interview content

1 Introducing the past and current operation or activities of your firm’s CSDS.

2 What kind of mechanism or function did your company interact with the members of CSDS?

3 How to build the trust and improve the commitment with the members of your own CSDS for achieving the product quality and fulfill the delivery?

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4 How auto-component manufacturers to be qualified membership in your company’s CSDS? How many categories of qualified members in your CSDS?

5 How does your company forward the market information to your CSDS member to meet the market demand?

6 Does your company have any kind of cooperative activities, such as joint venture, co-R&D with any CSDS members? How about member-to-member?

7 Does your company share the managerial skill or knowledge with the member of CSDS?

8 Is there any competition between members within your own CSDS?

9 Do you agree with that CSDS actually bring the significant benefit for your company? If not, are there any progresses to improve in the future?

10 Does your company have the vision and share it with the member of CSDS?

The questionnaire of study is modified from and refers to other researchers’

works (e.g. Friedman et al., 2007; Valente et al., 2008; M'Chirgui, 2007). The questionnaire includes four main parts. And the questionnaire will be filled by at least one representative from each firm who is responsible for procurement department or sales department (those have the experience or familiar to CSDS operations and activities and manager preferred). The first part is about network measurement. The study measures the transaction network with suppliers and buyers, and asks each representative to write down the transaction partners and rate the frequency of contact ranging from 1 to 7 (see Part I in Appendix). Also, four types of relationship arranged in this study will be used to find out the sub-relationships in the automobile industry.

In the second part, firm representative are ask to write down the firms for each type of relationship respectively without rating contacting frequency (see Part II in Appendix).

The third part of questionnaire is about the survey of inter-organizational relationships (IORs) (see Part III in Appendix) within the automobile industry.

Likert-type scale was adopted in this part to measure IORs, including trust, commitment, and shared vision. Trust is measured with five 7-points Likert items.

Commitment and shared vision are measured with five and three 7-points Likert items respectively. These are based on Li & Lin, 2006.

Fourth part is about degree of perception of CSDS function, perceptions of benefits and performance of participating CSDS (see Part IV in Appendix).

Organizational function is measured with seven 5-points Likert items asking representatives of firm to indicate how much they agree or disagree with following statements: (1) every CSDS members participate in discussion activity, not just a few;

(2) the CSDS is hierarchically managed (top-down decision-making); (3) the CSDS meetings are well organized and efficient; and so on (Jasuja et al., 2005; Valente et al., 2008). Perception of benefits is measured with five 5-points Likert items asking “how well the benefits that firms obtained from CSDS such as financial, human resources, physical support, power of negotiation with government, and flexible reaction?”

(Valente et al., 2008)

Perception of performance is measured with seven 5-points Likert items asking

“how successful has firm achieved the specific performance within CSDS such as implementing cost-leading strategies, shortening the delivering time, improving product quality, learning about dynamic industrial information, obtaining management or production techniques, more stable order/sourcing, and becoming more competitive?”

Besides, the survey measured organizational characteristics (firm name, size, capital, major product, length of time been involved in CSDS, attendance meeting frequency in CSDS) and firm position (auto-assembler or auto-component manufacturer) and firm representative information (department, job position).

The pre-testing is necessary for the data collection. In the pre-testing stage, all

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items for each section and for network data collection were reviewed by one academician and evaluated through structured interviews with three practitioners who were asked to comment on the appropriateness of the whole questionnaire structure.

Based on the feedback from these academicians and practitioners, redundant and ambiguous items were modified, simplified or eliminated. Since items were modified by practitioners who are familiar to CSDS operations and activities, it is believed that this could have lowered method variance and avoided unnecessary errors.