It was aimed to reduce possible research limitation, but it is necessary to point to the
following issues. First, all participants were located in German-speaking countries
only. Second, except for control variables, no objective data was drawn on. Due to the
fact that mainly high-level key informants participated, their judgments can be highly
relied on. Third, mainly OEM and first-tier suppliers participated in both the survey
and the case studies. Therefore, generalizability may be partially problematic for
companies further upstream in the supply chain (although we do not have any
indication that this actually is the case). Further, for some of the constructs an even
broader operationalization could have been possible. Research propositions yielded
from the case study were not tested empirically. This is a possible starting point for
further research. In spite of these issues, we are convinced that our findings provide an
important extension to the evolving literature on SCRM.