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21 – 30 of over 19000Nada Saleh Badawi and Moustafa Battor
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of social capital and relationship quality on key account management (KAM) effectiveness.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of social capital and relationship quality on key account management (KAM) effectiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the literature, the authors designed a framework that links social capital, relationship quality and KAM effectiveness. Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire. Using data from a sample of 172 business-to-business supplier firms, the authors examined this model.
Findings
The research results provide empirical support to the importance of relational aspects of KAM by showing how the relational aspects of relationship quality and social capital influence the effectiveness of the supplier-key account relationship.
Originality/value
The authors add to the literature on relational KAM by integrating theoretical perspectives on social capital, relationship quality and KAM. They develop a model that investigates the antecedents of the effectiveness of supplier–key account relationships from a relational perspective. The study explains the relationships between six constructs representing social capital (ability, benevolence, integrity, flexibility, information exchange and solidarity) and three constructs representing relationship quality (trust, satisfaction and relationship atmosphere), together with the relationships between these three constructs of relationship quality and KAM effectiveness.
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Michael Harvey and Milorad M. Novicevic
Globalization of organizations necessitates the development of a network organizational configuration. This new form of organization requires managers to become boundary spanners…
Abstract
Globalization of organizations necessitates the development of a network organizational configuration. This new form of organization requires managers to become boundary spanners between the various organizations aligned in the global business network. The question becomes how are these boundary‐spanning managers going to be identified and selected for global assignments. This paper examines the staffing options for marketing managers of integrative (i.e. relational) and market (i.e. transactional) modes of norm‐based control of global channels of distribution. Both transaction cost analysis and focus theory are used to identify which control mechanism would be most appropriate for each inter‐organizational situation.
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This paper aims to understand the factors of the exchange relationship that influence a target-partner’s decisions to adopt virtual governance strategies.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to understand the factors of the exchange relationship that influence a target-partner’s decisions to adopt virtual governance strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
Hypotheses are tested using an online panel of 259 key informants from manufacturing firms that sell goods to retailers. Data are analyzed using structural equation modeling.
Findings
The study confirms the hypotheses that the target partner’s trust in the initiating partner is a significant driver of supply chain management system (SCMS) adoption intention. While trust fully mediates the adverse effects of technological uncertainty on adoption intentions, asset specificity directly influences both trust and adoption intentions. Additionally, the initiating-partner’s incentive orientation mitigates these effects and encourages SCMS adoption.
Research limitations/implications
This paper contributes to the study of virtual governance and interorganizational adoption decisions in two primary ways. First, it elucidates the relationship between transaction costs and relational norms. Second, it examines the role that the shadow of past incentives has on the target-partner’s decisions to electronically integrate with the initiating partner.
Practical implications
The findings from this study contribute to the virtual governance and interorganizational technology adoption literature by demonstrating the relevance of characteristics of the exchange relationship in the target-partner’s decision to adopt the SCMS technologies necessary for electronic integration. This study provides a better understanding of the function of transaction costs and relational norms that paves the way for further exploration of the choice to adopt virtual governance strategies.
Originality/value
Given that SCMSs enable virtual governance, the findings of this study make important contributions to understanding how transactional and relational elements of the exchange relationship influence a target-partner’s decisions to participate in vertical control strategies with an initiating-partner.
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Ronald J. Ferguson, Michèle Paulin, Kathrin Möslein and Christina Müller
Emerging biotechnology firms rely on a network of socio‐economic partnerships that can be classified as “interimistic” or close, collaborative but relatively short‐lived. Few…
Abstract
Purpose
Emerging biotechnology firms rely on a network of socio‐economic partnerships that can be classified as “interimistic” or close, collaborative but relatively short‐lived. Few studies have assessed the importance of relational governance to the performance of these partnerships. The purposes of this research were to determine the effect of relational governance on the performance of financial partnerships and to compare biotechnology manager assessments of their financial and non‐financial partnerships.
Design/methodology/approach
Interviews were conducted with managers of emerging biotechnology companies and lead investors in Canada, France and Germany. Relational governance was assessed by relational norms such as flexibility, information sharing, solidarity and fairness. Performance was assessed by overall effectiveness and partnership benefits. First, the contribution of relational governance to partnership effectiveness and benefits was examined. Second, for the financial partnerships, the perceptions of both biotech managers and lead investors were compared. Third, the biotech manager perceptions of their financial and non‐financial partnerships were compared.
Findings
Relational governance is positively associated with performance. Communication (information sharing) was most predictive of partnership performance. Biotech managers view their financial partnerships as being less relational than do their lead investors. Also, biotech managers view their financial partnerships to be less relational than those with their non‐financial partners.
Originality/value
The findings extend our knowledge of the positive influence of relational governance from longer lasting exchanges to “interimistic” technology partnerships. The communication of pertinent and timely information is particularly relevant for both biotech managers and lead investors and can allay fears of opportunistic behaviour and develop trust and commitment.
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Robert C. Fink, William L. James and Kenneth J. Hatten
The purpose of this research is to understand what pricing, purchasing, product defect and late deliveries factors are associated with the decisions of small, medium and large…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to understand what pricing, purchasing, product defect and late deliveries factors are associated with the decisions of small, medium and large size customers to enter into closer customer‐supplier relationships with their suppliers.
Dessign/methodology/approach
The study involves a survey of 372 professionals in the paper industry to investigate the linkage between pricing, purchasing efficiencies and reductions in product defects and later deliveries and relational exchanges across customers of different sizes and resources.
Findings
The results indicate that the pricing, purchasing, product defect and late delivery factors associated with relational supply chain exchanges are different for small, medium and large size customers.
Research limitations/implications
Data were collected from individuals’ perspectives of the customer‐supplier relationships within customer organization only and involved the exchange of one type of product. Similar studies need to be conducted in other industries involving other types of product exchanges that capture both customer and supplier perspectives to verify these findings.
Practical implications
Supplier sales and marketing managers need to understand that different sized customers with different resources may have different performance objectives when entering into relational exchanges. These varying customer performance objectives should help supplier marketing managers to better segment their relational exchange customers and help them in assessing their ability to satisfy varying customer relational exchange performance goals.
Originality/value
While the linkage between closer customer‐supplier relationships and pricing, purchasing, product delivery has been studied in prior research, this is one of the first studies to show that different customer performance factors are associated with different sizes of customers and their relational exchanges. This paper also suggests that further research grounded on a resource‐based theory (RBT) of the firm would be valuable in better understanding the factors associated with different customers' relational exchanges.
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Hounaida El Jurdi and Roudaina Houjeir
Recent scholarship has highlighted the complexity of buyer-seller relationships in emerging markets and called for a better understanding of the cultural norms shaping such…
Abstract
Purpose
Recent scholarship has highlighted the complexity of buyer-seller relationships in emerging markets and called for a better understanding of the cultural norms shaping such relationships. This paper aims to draw on social capital theory to explore the role of networks and relational norms, such as wasta, in Arab culture on consumer relational behaviors. The Arab market constitutes a significant economy and social networks and relational norms are of significant value in Arab culture.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative approach was used to address the research questions. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 male and female consumers across Lebanon over a four-month period.
Findings
Social networks are heavily used in relational behaviors to achieve four types of goals, namely, self-serving goals, unity goals and equality goals and relationship maintenance goals. In fulfilling these goals consumers create economies of favors that aim at the using and maintenance of communal bonds.
Research limitations/implications
This study was conducted in one geographical context. While Lebanon shares many of its characteristics with other Arab countries, future research should aim at exploring the influence of social networks in other Arab and emerging market contexts.
Practical implications
Consumers have different motivations between formal and informal markets. The research suggests that small sellers in highly embedded markets need to use their social networks and to make their stories authentic and known within their communities to facilitate emotional connections with consumers.
Originality/value
Emerging markets offer opportunities to extend our understanding of marketing theory and practice. This research provides a richer understanding of Arab consumers and suggests that wasta relationships play a role in consumptive decisions and not just in business negotiations. Wasta, as a cultural form of cultural capital, is heavily used in consumption as a coping mechanism to overcome market inefficiencies.
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Monika Maria Möhring and John Finch
This paper aims to contrast two approaches to the study of contracts in business and industrial marketing: first, as a legal document in shaping at the outset exchanges and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to contrast two approaches to the study of contracts in business and industrial marketing: first, as a legal document in shaping at the outset exchanges and interactions, for instance in projects; and second, as relational norms in becoming integrated into a business relationship through interactions, for instance as a resource.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on cross-case comparison of three projects, as actors develop an engineering service for optimizing the maintenance of large-scale capital equipment by analyzing real-time data from sensors and user records. Comparison is by coding interview and observational data as micro-sequences of interactions among actors.
Findings
Preparing contracts allows a project to commence and is an early form of interaction, intensifying new relationships or cutting into and recasting established ones. Relational norms augment and can supersede the early focus on the contract, thus incorporating incremental innovation and absorbing some uncertainties.
Research limitations/implications
The research approach benefits from detailed comparison and captures some variety across its three cases, but the discussion is limited to theoretical generalization.
Practical implications
The analysis and discussion highlights and focuses on when different approaches to understanding contracting are more apparent across durable business relationships. Transitions from a contractual document to a view of relational norms are subtle, vulnerable and not always made successfully.
Originality/value
This paper’s originality is in it comparison of overlapping approaches to understanding businesses’ uses of contacts in business and industrial marketing, of contract and relational norms. It develops a valuable research proposition, in the transition from a mainly contractual to a mainly relational uses of contracts, thus identifying contract as a particular business resource, to be deployed and embedded.
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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the most important dimensions and antecedents of the employee's commitment to the firm using a multidisciplinary perspective.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the most important dimensions and antecedents of the employee's commitment to the firm using a multidisciplinary perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a national sample of 285 employees working in different firms, the research reported here portrays the paths which link the economic and relational antecedents of commitment with the dimensions of organizational commitment. A structural equations analysis is performed.
Findings
It was found that the most effective way to get normative commitment and thus make the employee continue working in the same firm is to engender affective commitment. And affective commitment is determined mainly by interaction between the firm and its employees (participation, flexibility and information exchange). Employee gender, level of studies, offspring and firm size and belonging to a group show a moderating effect on the global model.
Research limitations/implications
Information has only been collected from the employee and only in Spain. Hence, it would be interesting to collect information from the firm, supervisors and managers and to replicate the study in other cultural and labour contexts.
Practical implications
This research shows the most important ways for an organisation to get their employees' commitment. In this sense, relational norms are essential to retain employees in the firm.
Originality/value
A multidisciplinary perspective is adopted to improve the understanding of employee‐firm relationships. It is one of the few studies that include relational norms and opportunism to explain organisational commitment. Besides, the paper offers an exploratory study of the moderating effects of firm and employee characteristics on the global model.
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Gunnar Bakkeland and Pierre R. Berthon
Some understanding and form of inter‐organisation management is necessary and desirable if a channel is to maintain or achieve satisfactory performance as a competitive entity…
Abstract
Some understanding and form of inter‐organisation management is necessary and desirable if a channel is to maintain or achieve satisfactory performance as a competitive entity (Stern and El‐Ansary 1992). Although this view is not novel (of. Alderson 1954,1957), it has not been the subject of extensive research (Frazier 1983), and interorganisational coordination in distribution channels has perhaps received less focus as a survival requirement (Dwyer and Oh 1988) than it deserves. Stern and El‐Ansary (1992) seem to reflect traditional points of view when stating that power is the major means available to achieve coordination and co‐operation among channel members. Power, however, gives rise to channel dependence and interdependence issues, (of. Pfeffer and Salancik 1978; Gaski 1984; Brown, Lusch and Muehling 1983), and issues of interorganisational governance mechanisms which for some years have also interested institutional economists, (of. Williamson 1993, 1991, 1986, 1981, 1975, Ouchi 1980) and economic sociologists, (of. Granovetter, 1985, Granovetter and Swedberg 1992). The marketing literature (of. Heide and John 1992; 1990; 1988) has questioned Williamson's somewhat simplistic treatment of opportunism as an underlying behavioural norm, central as this is to his transaction cost paradigm. Since Heide and John's [1992] work on the role of norms in marketing relationships, there is a distinct possibility that insufficient further research has been done in order to allow comparisons of their findings with those of other studies that differ with regard to cultures, settings, and time periods. Maintaining focus on the transaction between dyadic exchange partners as a fundamental activity in marketing channels (of. Achrol, Stern, and Reve 1983), the objectives of this article are to examine the existence or otherwise of relational norms between dyadic exchange partners serving as a governance mechanism safeguarding against opportunistic behaviour in the presence of transaction‐specific assets. The work of Heide and John [1992] shed much light on this, but examined the dyad from the perspective of a strong buyer facing a large number of small suppliers. We will focus on a strong supplier, facing a large number of small buyers, currently, but not indefinitely, bound to it by legislation and contract. The perspective adopted will be that of many small buyers (phar‐macies) from a monopolistic ethical drug wholesaler, at the time of dismantling of a statutory wholesale drug monopoly in Norway.
Bo Tian, Zizhao Wang, Chunhao Li and Jiaxin Fu
According to relational contract theory, relational governance has potential to improve public-private partnership (PPP) infrastructure project sustainability. The main purpose of…
Abstract
Purpose
According to relational contract theory, relational governance has potential to improve public-private partnership (PPP) infrastructure project sustainability. The main purpose of this research is to investigate the association between relational governance and the sustainability of PPP infrastructure projects. Further, this study examines the mediating effect of managerial innovation and the moderating role of public involvement.
Design/methodology/approach
Research data were collected from 158 valid questionnaires completed by Chinese PPP professionals. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was then employed to test five hypotheses.
Findings
Results indicate a positive correlation between relational governance and PPP infrastructure project sustainability. This linkage is regulated by public involvement. In addition, managerial innovation plays a mediating role between relational governance and the sustainability of PPP infrastructure projects.
Originality/value
This study verifies the relationship between relational governance and PPP infrastructure project sustainability, as well as intermediary and regulatory factors, providing a new approach to achieving sustainability in PPP infrastructure projects.
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