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This study aims to examine empirically the existence of four classical and four emerging buyer–supplier relationship (BSR) types and how they differ in terms of behavioral dynamics and performance measures.

This study uses an online survey to collect data from 371 purchasing managers in the USA.

A cluster analysis statistically supports the existence of five of these eight BSR types, including strategic/bilateral partnership, market/discrete, supplier-led collaboration, captive supplier/buyer dominant and captive buyer/supplier dominant BSRs. Further, ANOVA tests show that these five BSRs differ in terms of behavioral outcomes and performance measures.

This study is based on a cross-sectional survey so it cannot examine how these BSR types may evolve over time, and it is not suitable to examine some rare types of BSRs. In addition, this study does not consider contextual factors that may moderate the influence of BSR types on the behavioral dynamics and performance measures.

Managers should consider the potential to be able to develop and enhance a strategic/bilateral relationship with their supply chain partners, which in at least some circumstances can lead to superior performance results. Similar observations can be made with respect to supplier-led and, to a lesser degree, buyer-led collaboration.

Most existing research of the BSR types is largely a product of theoretical classifications, and there is also a lack of research of their performance implications. This study fills these gaps in the literature.

Although many authors examine relationships, few attempt to classify alternative structures. In this research a relationship strength construct is developed to distinguish among alternative relationship structures based on a key mediating variable set derived from an assessment of the dominant behavior process and economic content variables underlying important buyer‐seller relationships. Results using a cluster analysis procedure based on a sample of 200 industrial company respondents from the UK engineering, electronic and telecommunications sectors support the classification. This allows us to discriminate between four relationship structures in main buyer‐supplier relationships, which are labeled: bilateral, recurrent, dominant partner, and discrete. Such a classification can provide managers with a mechanism for analyzing and planning for the development of their inter‐firm relationships.

Despite a growing interest in research, no existing study explores the nature of, and the relationship between, the real exchange rate and trade imbalance between Taiwan and China. These economies were admitted to the World Trade Organization in late 2001 (China) and in January 2002 (Taiwan). This study aims to redress this deficiency.

Using Johansen's cointegration approach and bilateral trade data, the study reveals overwhelming evidence of a stable long‐run relationship of the real exchange rate and bilateral trade balance between Taiwan and its trading partners: China, the USA, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore.

The evidence indicates that the currency depreciation of the New Taiwan dollar improves Taiwan's bilateral trade balance, except with China.

The findings imply that Taiwan cannot resolve the cross‐Strait trade imbalance alone via the currency depreciation, and macroeconomic adjustments, including application of the WTO rules, currency exchange and imports of Chinese goods, need to be negotiated on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Proposes that successful implementation of a relationship marketing program requires a complement of strategies that satisfies and motivates customers through different phases of relationship development. To accomplish this, firms simultaneously implement transactional marketing strategies and relational marketing strategies. Offers a case study of a non‐profit professional theater to demonstrate how a firm can implement multiple marketing strategies to achieve different relational objectives, and extends these findings to offer recommendations and managerial implications.

State-owned firms play important roles in Chinese cross-border acquisition (CBA) activities. However, compared with private firms, state-owned firms have a lower likelihood of acquisition completion and take longer to complete a deal. This paper aims to determine why this phenomenon exists and how state-owned firms can overcome the constraints of their identity.

By integrating organizational learning theory with institutional theory, this paper attempts to answer the research questions from a legitimacy perspective. Employing Chinese CBA data from 1982 to 2014, the authors use a logit model and a random effects model to test the hypothesis.

The results show that a state-owned identity easily causes legitimacy concerns among host country regulatory agencies; thus, it may result in longer and more uncertain evaluation behaviors, which lead to a lower likelihood of CBA completion and a longer deal duration. Only experience with failed acquisitions can increase CBA completion probability. Furthermore, in very complex decision-making environments, such as that surrounding deal duration, only specific types of experience (i.e. experience of failed international acquisitions) can trigger learning behavior, whereas general experience (i.e. failed acquisition experience) has little influence. Favorable bilateral relationships may not improve the completion rate and efficiency of state-owned firms, but high-quality host country institutions lead to a higher likelihood of CBA completion among state-owned firms; however, this may be not conducive to decreasing the time needed to complete an acquisition deal.

First, by discussing the completion rate and duration of CBAs conducted by state-owned firms and analyzing the factors that influence them, this paper enriches and develops the theory of organizational overseas mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Second, by adopting a legitimacy perspective and integrating institutional theory, the authors theorize how state-owned status influences firms’ M&A completion rate and time and test the hypotheses empirically; thus, this paper improves and deepens institutional theory. Third, by discussing how different types of experience (i.e. successful experience vs failed acquisition experience) influence the acquisition completion rate and duration and how general experience and specific types of experience affect these two dependent variables differently, this paper explains how state-owned firms can learn effectively from experience, contributing to organizational learning theory.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) dominated by Chinese enterprises have become increasingly conspicuous and prevalent in recent years. However, many of them were obstructed by foreign governments on the ground of “Threating National Security”. Overseas acquisition is a crucial step of Chinese Government’s “Going-Out” strategy, so analyzing the attribution of its success and failure is very important.

This paper adopts empirical study method to analyze the factors from political and cultural perspectives based on a sample of 327 cross-border M&A transactions made by all listed companies in China from 1997 to 2010.

The result shows higher failure rate for those acquisition targets which could be classified as political sensitive assets; meanwhile, positive diplomatic relations and higher bilateral trust between China and the host country will facilitate the M&A transaction.

This paper offers a new research angle on cross-border M&As, which is the impact of culture factors, as well as diplomatic relationship, bilateral trust and war history between China and the host country on M&A transactions. This paper also constructs several ways of measuring the diplomatic relationship between countries.

The purpose of this study is to review the existing typologies of buyer-supplier relationships (BSRs) in the literature, to critically assess their dimensions and underlying assumptions, and to propose a more complete BSR typology and future directions for BSR typology research.

This study takes a conceptual approach in highlighting the limitations of existing BSR typologies and synthesizing their key typology-defining variables when proposing an alternative BSR typology.

The proposed BSR typology is based on alternative behavioral assumptions: bounded rationality and choice-determinism, and uses relationalism, supplier dependence and buyer dependence as the typology-defining variables. This BSR typology captures four prominent BSR types in the extant literature (i.e. market/discrete relationship, captive-buyer/supplier-dominant relationship, captive-supplier/buyer-dominant relationship and strategic/bilateral partnership) and four new BSR types developed in this study (i.e. supplier-led collaboration, buyer-led collaboration, competitive/win–lose partnership, and free will/voluntary collaboration).

The performance implications of the new BSR types have yet to be empirically tested; however, empirical approaches for future research are discussed.

As BSR typology research has been conducted over the years, a thorough review and systematic assessment of the extant research in terms of fundamental assumptions, typology-defining variables, overall progress and limitations becomes an important reflective task in guiding future research efforts toward the collective advancement in this line of inquiry. Departing from the existing literature, this study also uses more realistic BSR assumptions and a more complete set of typology-defining variables in developing an alternative BSR typology, arguably more complete and more theoretically sound than the previous BSR typologies in the literature.

The purpose of this study is to examine supplier–customer capabilities in solution co-creation and how they are matched from a relational process perspective.

Using a qualitative approach, the authors identified 20 sets of supplier–customer capability matches by conducting in-depth interviews with 34 matched informants and retrieving suppliers’ archival data (project documents and success stories).

The authors identified 20 capability matching sets (21 supplier and 23 customer capabilities) and developed a process-based model of bilateral capabilities that match at the organizational level in solution co-creation. The authors reveal their match forms (complementarity and compatibility) and offer suggestions for future research.

This paper is qualitative; quantitative studies are required for testing and extending the initial conclusions.

This study guides the supplier and customer to cultivate different capabilities at different stages of solution co-creation and alerts them to the importance of capability complementarity and compatibility.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to introduce the bilateral perspective into dynamic capability research in the context of solution co-creation. The authors discuss the abilities the supplier and customer must possess at different stages and how they match dynamically. The analysis extends the research on solution-specific capabilities and dynamic matching, offering useful implications for solution co-creation in practice.

There has been a steady increase in the amount of research and theorising in the area of interorganisational research, especially with regard to buyer‐seller arrangements in marketing channels (Andersen and Narus 1990, Bergen et.al., 1992, Boyle et.al., 1992). Alternative interorganisational governance models, such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, and sole‐sourcing are the reality of modern business management (Borys and Jemison 1989, Buckley and Casson 1988), and so interfirm governance has become a strategic management issue. The much‐cited work of Porter (1985, 1991) has focused on the optimal linkage of interfirm activities, and regards the planning and governance of interfirm relations as an important competitive strategic issue, a point reiterated by Heide (1994). The issue of channel relationships has been one of concern for both practitioners and academics, and theories such as those of transaction cost analysis (TCA), agency theory, and relational norms have on the one hand shed much light on the problems, and on the other provided a fruitful backdrop to much empirical research. Less attention has been given to the effects of time on these notions, both in the literature and in empirical research. In this article we provide an overview of the theories, and attempt an integration. The purpose of this article is to focus on transaction cost economics (TCE) and relational exchange theory to provide an overview of the areas of interorganisational research where relationships play a role. A number of areas where the theories diverge and converge are outlined. More importantly, we endeavour to bring the effects of time into consideration, and to develop propositions for further research.

This paper analyzes the role of trade credit in financial crises. Using newly collected data, we investigate the impact of negotiated agreements between debtor and creditor countries on bilateral trade. Our results indicate that exports to creditor countries rise considerably after debt restructuring agreements in the period 1980–1997, while we find no effect for imports and for the more recent period. We identify trade credit as one key channel behind this positive effect. Apparently, crisis resolution efforts, in particular agreements to extend and roll over trade credits, play a crucial role for export recoveries. This gives some support to current worldwide efforts to sustain trade financing via coordinated policy interventions.