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Managers and academics alike focus on value creation in business relationships. This paper adds to existing literature by analyzing functions of business relationships and their impact on value perception. Applying a customer perspective, direct relationship functions are concerned about payment, quality, and volume. Indirect functions include innovation, access, and scouting. Furthermore, trust and number of alternative suppliers are included in the study. The empirical results illustrate the important role of direct and indirect functions for value creation. Understanding these functions is instrumental for driving customer value, both for the supplier and the seller. Direct functions do have a much stronger impact on value than indirect functions that still do have a significant impact. Thus, increasing direct function fulfillment is much more effective in order to gain key supplier status than relying only on indirect functions. But indirect functions may offer ample differentiation opportunities. Being a strong driver of relationship value, trust is also driven by function fulfillment. Thus, relationship value depends on rational elements (functions) and social elements (trust). Availability of alternative suppliers increases the importance of relationship function fulfillment on customer value and customer trust. In highly competitive markets, suppliers need clear understanding and communication of relationship value in order to succeed.

The paper aims to present how relationship value is created and how it influences the existing buyer‐supplier relationship and the buyer's performance. It seeks to introduce the construct of business relationship function to analyze why the business relationship is valuable and to investigate the links between business relationship function, relationship quality and buyer's performance. Moreover, it aims to investigate whether the availability of alternative suppliers changes the influence of business relationship function on relationship quality.

A questionnaire survey was conducted in 239 manufacturing firms in north‐west China, and the hyphotheses were tested using a structural equation model with LISREL software.

The results indicate that business relationship function has a direct as well as an indirect effect on buyer's performance through the mediating effect of relationship quality. The study also finds that business relationship function has a stronger influence on relationship quality than it does on buyer's performance. Moreover, the availability of alternative suppliers will weaken the influence of business relationship function on relationship quality.

This study concentrates on only the direct functions of business relationships and the indirect functions are neglected. Future studies should investigate the direct function as well as the indirect function, and the dynamic nature of business relationships should be considered.

The study suggests that managers should develop and maintain long‐term relationships through the fulfillment of business relationship functions. The role of function fulfillment is even more important when there is competition among alternative suppliers.

The study provides a sound agenda for future research on supply chain management and industrial marketing, and has important implications for practising managers, especially in the Chinese context and other similar developing countries.

This paper sets out to consider the scale and scope of the value relationship functions of trading partners and of their connected relationships created in a cross‐cultural framework.

Using a previously‐developed framework of relationship and network functions the paper presents the findings from a database of connected relationships. The perceived importance of relationship functions are compared for buyers and sellers from Europe and China.

It was found that direct functions are more important than indirect functions. There are some differences in perceived importance of functions for buyers and sellers. There are also cross‐national differences in ratings across a range of functions. It is speculated that differences are driven by cultural differences, differing degrees of internationalisation, length of relationships and nature of home market mechanisms.

Further research is needed to explain how desired and actual relationship functions vary under different market and relationship circumstances and the implications of discrepancies between what suppliers and customers perceive their important functions are and what their counterparts perceive and desire. Future research should also consider the dysfunctions of relationships. Research comparing different parts of China, arguably more diverse than many European countries, should also be undertaken.

The differences between the Chinese and European samples are less than expected. This indicates that business models of relationship functions developed for Western business may be more applicable to China than originally thought and there may be more common ground in international business than has been previously indicated.

The paper simultaneously considers the cultural and role differences of relational functioning. The findings are highly generalizable. This enables application of the findings to a diverse range of international business relationships and the possibility for managers to re‐evaluate their international relationship management strategies.

Organizations have become increasingly interested in developing their human resources. One tool that has been explored in this quest is mentoring. This has led to a surge in mentoring research and an increase in the number of formal mentoring programs implemented in organizations. This review provides a survey of the empirical work on mentoring that is organized around the major questions that have been investigated. Then a conceptual model, focused on formal mentoring relationships, is developed to help understand the mentoring process. The model draws upon research from a diverse body of literature, including interpersonal relationships, career success, training and development, and informal mentoring. Finally, a discussion of critical next steps for research in the mentoring domain is presented.

Several studies have focussed on new ventures and the development of their first business relationships. However, the understanding of the value functions and involvement in those relationships remain inadequate. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relating process of a new venture by combining the value function framework and the notion of the degrees of involvement in business relationships.

The authors rely on two exploratory longitudinal case studies that focus on two start-ups. In both cases, the evolution of initial relationships with suppliers and customers over a period of time are studied.

The process of relating can occur through a diversity of business relationships manifested in both their value functions and their degree of involvement. The combination of value functions is not stable over time nor is the degree of involvement in business relationships. Moreover, specific interdependencies emerge between the value functions in the customer base and the supplier base of the new ventures over time.

This paper is among the few that explore the emergence of new ventures by considering both suppliers and customer relationships. From a business network perspective, the paper also shows that combining value functions and degrees of involvement provides a better understanding of the role of relationship diversity in the process of becoming a node in the business network.

This paper deals with the organizing of interactive product development. Developing products in interaction between firms may provide benefits in terms of specialization, increased innovation, and possibilities to perform development activities in parallel. However, the differentiation of product development among a number of firms also implies that various dependencies need to be dealt with across firm boundaries. How dependencies may be dealt with across firms is related to how product development is organized. The purpose of the paper is to explore dependencies and how interactive product development may be organized with regard to these dependencies.

The analytical framework is based on the industrial network approach, and deals with the development of products in terms of adaptation and combination of heterogeneous resources. There are dependencies between resources, that is, they are embedded, implying that no resource can be developed in isolation. The characteristics of and dependencies related to four main categories of resources (products, production facilities, business units and business relationships) provide a basis for analyzing the organizing of interactive product development.

Three in-depth case studies are used to explore the organizing of interactive product development with regard to dependencies. The first two cases are based on the development of the electrical system and the seats for Volvo’s large car platform (P2), performed in interaction with Delphi and Lear respectively. The third case is based on the interaction between Scania and Dayco/DFC Tech for the development of various pipes and hoses for a new truck model.

The analysis is focused on what different dependencies the firms considered and dealt with, and how product development was organized with regard to these dependencies. It is concluded that there is a complex and dynamic pattern of dependencies that reaches far beyond the developed product as well as beyond individual business units. To deal with these dependencies, development may be organized in teams where several business units are represented. This enables interaction between different business units’ resource collections, which is important for resource adaptation as well as for innovation. The delimiting and relating functions of the team boundary are elaborated upon and it is argued that also teams may be regarded as actors. It is also concluded that a modular product structure may entail a modular organization with regard to the teams, though, interaction between business units and teams is needed. A strong connection between the technical structure and the organizational structure is identified and it is concluded that policies regarding the technical structure (e.g. concerning “carry-over”) cannot be separated from the management of the organizational structure (e.g. the supplier structure). The organizing of product development is in itself a complex and dynamic task that needs to be subject to interaction between business units.

Earlier studies have generally shown a positive relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and the overall performance of the firm. The purpose of this paper is to understand in more detail how EO influences firm performance. It adds to the literature by distinguishing performances of different functions in a firm and by exploring how the dimensions of EO influence these functional performances and, in turn, overall firm performance.

This study examined the relationship between three dimensions of EO (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking), three types of functional performances of firms (R&D performance, production performance, marketing and sales performance) and the overall performance of firms. The data are collected from 279 high-tech small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using a postal survey. The proposed hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results indicate that the dimensions of (EO) are related in different ways to the performance of functions in a firm. A positive relationship is observed between innovativeness and R&D performance and between proactiveness and marketing and sales performance. A negative relationship exists between risk-taking and production performance. The results also show a sequential positive relationship from R&D via production and marketing and sales to overall performance of firms. Therefore, it is concluded that the R&D, production and marketing and sales functions reinforce each other in a logic order and are complementary in their effect on overall firm performance.

The results imply that the three functions, R&D, production and marketing and sales, in a firm play different roles, both in the firm’s EO and in their contribution to overall performance. Managers can use the findings to monitor and influence the performance of different functions in a firm to increase overall firm performance.

The first contribution of this study is that it unravels (i) which dimensions of EO have an effect on the performance of separate functions in a firm, indicating that functions contribute in different ways to entrepreneurial orientation of the firm. A second contribution is assessing how the performance of these functions influence the firm’s overall performance. This paper fills a gap in the literature by exploring internal firm variables mediating the relationship between EO and overall firm performance and contributes to the discussion on the contradictory results regarding the relationship between risk-taking and firm performance.

The purpose of this study is to enhance understanding of the club's role in the customer relationships of a telecommunications company by re‐considering the concepts of frequency and commitment in a telecom‐customer club.

We interviewed telecom customers that were members of a Swedish telecom company's customer club. The approach was to understand the customer evaluation of the customer club. We conducted 44 in‐depth interviews with members of the loyalty club.

We found an umbrella concept for the club regarding loyalty: a keeping function, which divided the customer club in two ways: the affective role makes the customer stay with the company and the calculative role with a more inferred loyalty function. The expressions that were not connected to loyalty is the attracting function.

The limitations of our qualitative study include the small sample size, and it represents only one kind of industry and one company.

The first contribution of this study is the new perspective of customer clubs in the telecommunications industry on customer relationships. The implication is that customers do not always consider all parts of the club when they stay loyal, and not always think about it when they plan future behaviour.The second contribution is the result regarding re‐consideration of the frequency concept. Bearing in mind the delimitations, the calculative role dominated the affective role. Thirty‐three of the 44 members said that their club was of minor importance in terms of relationship continuation. The calculative role is, accordingly, dominant.

The purpose of the paper is to explicate how connectedness of relationships results in varying value potentials of triads.

First connectedness is re-described as an actor-perceived and actor-interpreted phenomenon. The re-description is used to theorize the triad value function. Next, the applicability and validity of the concept is examined in a case study of four closed vertical supply chain triads.

The case study demonstrates that the triad value function facilitates the analysis and understanding of an apparent paradox; that distributors are not dis-intermediated in spite of their limited contribution to activities in the triads. The results indicate practical adequacy of the triad value function.

The triad value function is difficult to apply in the study of expanded networks as the number of connections expands exponentially with the number of ties in the network. Moreover, it must be applied in the study of service triads and open vertical supply chain triads to further verify the practical adequacy of the concept.

The triad value function cannot be used normatively or prescriptively. It is a descriptive tool which indirectly supports managerial decision-making through the analysis of how the structural context of a triad influences the value of relationships.

The paper offers an additional aspect for the study of value in and of triads. It illustrates that perceived connectedness of relationships operates as a triad value function, which captures the structural value potential of the triad for a focal actor.

Existing supply chain (SC) performance models are not able to cope with the potential of intensive SC digitalisation and establish a relationship between decisions and decision criteria. The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated knowledge-based system (KBS) that creates a link between decisions and decision criteria (attributes) and evaluates the overall SC performance.

The proposed KBS is grounded on the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (fuzzy AHP), which establishes a relationship between short-term and long-term decisions and SC performance criteria (short-term and long-term) for accurate and integrated Overall SC performance evaluation.

The proposed KBS evaluates the overall SC performance, establishes a relationship between decisions (long-term and short-term) and decision criteria of SC functions and provides decision makers with a view of the impact of their short-term or long-term decisions on overall SC performance. The proposed system was implemented in a case company where the authors were able to develop a SC performance monitoring dashboard for the company’s top managers and operational managers.

The proposed KBS assists organisations and decision makers in evaluating their overall SC performance and helps in identifying underperforming SC functions and their associated criteria. It may also be considered as a tool for benchmarking SC performance against competitors. It can efficiently point to improvement directions and help decision makers improve overall SC performance.

The proposed KBS provides a holistic and integrated approach, establishes a relationship between decisions and decision criteria and evaluates overall SC performance, which is one of the main limitations in existing supply chain performance measurement systems.