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The paper aims to consider the underlying premises of Peter Drucker's managerial writing and focuses on three main aspects: humans and relations, an evolutionary perspective and a pragmatic perspective. These ontological views are taken to a new level and applied to explore the world of networked firms.

The paper is a conceptual contribution based on a literature study by the author.

An examination of Drucker's ontology shows how his world perspective led him to an understanding of managers and organisations. The three elements of his ontology discussed are applied to research in business networks.

The paper argues for research on human perspectives of business relationships and networks, particularly of issues such as time, timing, partner integration, relational and network embeddedness, network sensing, network horizons, and network identity.

Drucker's ontological view enabled him to make pronouncements that cut through to the truth of reality in our organisationally shaped world. Understanding Drucker's ontology provides managers with ways to deepen their understanding of an individual's role at every level within an organisation.

The linking of Drucker's ontology to research on new ways to organise and manage networked firms opens areas of future research.

Business and customer relationships build on interactions between the parties. However, the marketing literature does not pay much attention to the concept of interaction. Interaction is a central construct of the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group as a result of a strong empirical focus on interfirm relations. However, even this research does not strongly address the interaction construct. Interaction between parties in the economic world refers to the exchanges and communications between parties that lead to development of relationships.

While interaction occurs in the on-going present, the purpose is always about creating a future for each of the participants in the relationship. Based on the authors’ presentation at the International Colloquium in Relationship Marketing at Leipzig, Germany, in September 2006, this chapter presents a model of interaction within business and customer relationships that relies upon time and cognition to explain the formation of relationships (or atmosphere) through interactive cognitive processes. This model allows an analysis of the ways the future is shaped in different types of business and customer relationships, depending on the relative ability of the parties to have an effect on the future. The analysis shows how firms and customers work to slow down or speed up change. The final section of the chapter addresses the research implications.

Value appropriation is a central, yet neglected aspect in business exchange research. The purpose of the paper is to generate an overview of research on active value appropriation in business exchange and provide the foundation for further research into value appropriation, as well as some initial guidance for managers.

Literatures investigating value appropriation were identified by the means of a systematic review of the overall management literature.

The authors provide an overview and comparison of the literatures and find that they apply diverse understandings of the value appropriation process and emphasize different mechanisms and outcomes of value appropriation.

Based on the literature comparison and discussion, in combination with inspiration from alternative business exchange literature, the authors propose four areas with high potential for future research into value appropriation: network position effects, appropriation acts and behaviors, buyer-seller relationship effects, and appropriation over time.

Boundary spanning managers acting in industrial markets must master the difficult balance between value creation and appropriation. This review has provided an overview of the many managerial options for value appropriation and created knowledge on the effects of the various appropriation mechanisms enabling managers to secure company rents while not jeopardizing value creation.

To the authors' knowledge, this paper represents the first attempt at reviewing the management literature on value appropriation in business exchange. The authors provide overview, details, comparisons, and frame a research agenda as a first step towards establishing value appropriation as a key phenomenon in business exchange research.

The aim of this paper is to develop a multidisciplinary approach towards supply chain partnering to increase sensitivity for providing more powerful explanations of this complex, dynamic and sometimes paradoxical phenomenon.

The methodology employed is conceptual theory development, grounded upon transaction cost economics, organizational design, and organization behaviour theory.

The main concerns of partnering are appropriation, coordination and adaptation. The relative importance of each concern varies depending on the partnership's stage of development. The paper argues that the different bodies of literature each emphasize a different concern. Consequently, the multidisciplinary approach developed has a temporal nature and the three mentioned bodies of literature fit in different stages with associated concerns.

Propositions for empirical testing are developed, regarding, for example, the impact of adaptation on the risk of appropriation.

Understanding the interrelation between the different concerns can increase the success of a partnership.

The temporal approach contributes by drawing a full picture of supply chain partnering, which is not obtained by viewing each one of its constituting bodies of literature in isolation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between marketing strategy types – aggressive marketing, price leadership and product specialization strategies – and the extent of relationalism in marketing channels.

Data were collected using a self‐administered survey from managers responsible for marketing and channels management in US pharmaceutical firms. The responses to the questions capturing focal constructs were measured using a five‐point Likert type scale. Data were analyzed using Principal Component Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling procedures.

Aggressive marketing strategy and price leadership strategy are positively associated with the level of relationalism in marketing channels. In contrast, product specialization (focus) strategy is negatively associated with the level of relationalism in marketing channels.

The relationship between marketing strategy and the emergent relationalism among marketing channel intermediaries is critical for the firm's ability to meet objectives. This relationship has not been investigated so far and, from a managerial perspective, managing marketing channels is critical for successful implementation of marketing strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a more comprehensive conceptualisation of supplier perceived value (SPV) in business relationships for B2B services.

An exploratory qualitative study was conducted amongst logistics firms in Lithuania, which are members of the Lithuanian National Road Carriers' Association (Linava). Data were derived from 13 interviews with senior managers.

SPV is proposed to be a higher order construct consisting of three value dimensions capturing the financial, strategic, and co‐creating value of a customer relationship, which in turn are determined by customer and relationship capabilities and competencies.

The proposed conceptualisation of SPV is based on generic literature and interview data derived from the haulage industry. While the key dimensions of the SPV are sufficiently generic to apply to complex B2B services in general, some aspects (e.g. proxies) might be specific to the context of this study.

The conceptual model of SPV can be employed by both service suppliers and customers. Service suppliers could utilise it as a tool to prioritise or segment customers, as well as for tailoring service packages to a customer's SPV profile. From the customer's perspective, the model provides a diagnostic tool to assess how important a customer is to a service provider and the level of commitment a customer can expect from a supplier. The study provides insights into the Lithuanian road haulage industry, which is of strategic importance for supply chains linking Western Europe with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries and other Asian markets.

This paper redresses the imbalance in attention paid to value perceptions from the supplier side of the dyad compared with those of the customer. Unlike previous research, it stresses the importance of co‐creation value as a critical dimension of supplier‐perceived value of a customer relationship, in addition to financial and strategic value dimensions. It emphasises the interplay between knowledge, social and operational capabilities to co‐create value.

This paper aims to develop the concept of interorganizational adaptation (IOAD) in customer‐supplier dyads, and more specifically its behavioral dimension and its main impacting factor constituted by power.

Building on social capital literature, the paper develops a comprehensive classification of behavioral IOAD. The proposed cognitive, relational and structural sub‐dimensions are explored through an embedded multi‐case study in the European food industry. Data are collected at both sides of the dyads, providing a rich account of supply chain partnering.

The cases show that acknowledgement and understanding of the behavioral dimension of IOAD, besides the more elaborate technical dimension, aids in explaining several paradoxical situations. Furthermore, the case data confirm the projected relationship between power and technical IOAD; dominated relationships present unilateral technical IOAD, whereas reciprocal relationships present bilateral technical IOAD. Analysis of a deviant case, however, suggests that the impact of power is weakened by the presence of behavioral IOAD.

A longitudinal rather than the cross‐sectional research design used might shed additional light on the phenomenon. Nonetheless, the relationship age of the six cases varies from three to 50 years providing data related to different stages of partnering.

The paper fosters practitioners' attention for behavioral aspects of supply chain partnering in order to understand actual successes and failures.

The paper shows that social capital theory contributes to one's understanding of IOAD.

The strategic importance of the purchasing function increases, as its task become more dynamic in various interfaces with different suppliers. Changes in these customer–supplier interfaces pose specific challenges. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the purchasing function handles the interplay of interface changes.

This study applies a qualitative single case study design. Data are collected through observations and interviews conducted before, during and after a concrete change of interface taking place between a buying firm and its suppliers and customers.

Three main findings are identified to redefine the tasks of the purchasing function. The first concerns the new ways of defining the purchasing tasks. The main issue is to balance tasks with the simultaneous changes influencing other interfaces and relationships. The second is the division and alignment of tasks in intra- and inter-organizational networks with regards to who decides and coordinates what. Third, the inter-connected performance relates to how other actors perform their tasks. For the purchasing function, managing supplier interfaces influences and is influenced by how the firm simultaneously manages its user interface.

For management, a new way to evaluate the performance of the purchasing function is needed by including relationship management and interactive capabilities.

This study contributes with new insights into how managing the dynamics of changing interfaces requires interactively defined purchasing tasks, division and alignment of tasks and inter-connected performance vis-à-vis others in the wider network setting.

This paper examines the role of professional associations, governmental agencies, and international accounting and auditing bodies in promulgating standards to deter and detect fraud, domestically and abroad. Specifically, it focuses on the role played by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the US Government Accounting Office (GAO), and other national and foreign professional associations, in promulgating auditing standards and procedures to prevent fraud in financial statements and other white‐collar crimes. It also examines several fraud cases and the impact of management and employee fraud on the various business sectors such as insurance, banking, health care, and manufacturing, as well as the role of management, the boards of directors, the audit committees, auditors, and fraud examiners and their liability in the fraud prevention and investigation.