TY - JOUR AB - This paper uses an empirical study of the collaborative business relationships between Opel Portugal as a subsidiary the American automotive manufacturer General Motors and its Portuguese‐based direct suppliers (PBDS) as a means of exploring the contributions of the three research traditions of supply chain management, multinational theory and, crucially, the role of the IMP approach. Within this research, the supply chain management concept of partnering is used to provide a bridge between the dyadic and network perspectives. Also, due to its potential in describing complex business networks and in capturing the nature of dyadic business relationships, the analytical tool related to the IMP work, the ARA (activities‐resources‐actors) model, by Häkansson and Snehota, is a major influence on the development of the conceptual framework presented in this study. The case results indicate the possibility of mapping the constructs of the partnering approach onto the ARA model to understand the dyad within a network context where the MNC's structure and operation exerts an often constraining role on the possible dyadic interactions. VL - 21 IS - 2 SN - 0265-1335 DO - 10.1108/02651330410531367 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/02651330410531367 AU - de Lurdes Veludo Maria AU - Macbeth Douglas K. AU - Purchase Sharon PY - 2004 Y1 - 2004/01/01 TI - Partnering and relationships within an international network context T2 - International Marketing Review PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 142 EP - 157 Y2 - 2024/03/29 ER -