Relational mechanisms, market contracts and cross‐enterprise knowledge trading in the supply chain

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of relational mechanisms and market contracts on cross‐enterprise knowledge trading in supply chain and to examine the role of market contracts. Relational mechanism is categorized into indirect and direct relational mechanism in this paper. Cross‐enterprise knowledge trading is categorized into explicit and tacit knowledge trading. The indirect relational mechanism is mainly expressed by knowledge brokers, while the direct relational mechanism consists of shared goals and trust.Design/methodology/approach – Multiple regression analysis was performed on questionnaire data from 256 Chinese manufacturing enterprises in supply chain in order to assess the relationships between relational mechanisms, market contracts and cross‐enterprise knowledge trading.Findings – The results show that knowledge brokers and market contracts have significant and positive effects on explicit knowledge trading, but the effects on tacit knowledge trading are not signif...