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Higher education research is replete with discussion of boundaries imagined as structural constraints in need of removal or circumvention. But, while foregrounding national–transnational frameworks, leadership strategising and institutional structures, the scholarship is subdued about how boundaries are actually dealt with at ground level. How do practitioners come together, day by day, across higher education boundaries; and what is required for desirable practices to be nurtured? It is on this issue, and in particular the theorisation of this issue, that this chapter will focus.

This chapter presents and develops a relational working framework, based on the work of Anne Edwards. We highlight three core concepts (common knowledge, relational expertise and relational agency), disaggregating each into constituent features. We then apply the framework to reinterpret previously published empirical studies, to demonstrate its broad applicability. We argue that the framework usefully conceptualises how practitioners work with others across boundaries; that it helps us to notice how many boundaries are, in fact, routinely permeated; and that it usefully highlights important aspects of local practices that are easily obscured.

The authors apply Alan P. Fiske's relational models framework to customers' engagement with service firms – specifically, they propose that customers who hold different relational models for the service firm are likely to engage with the firm in dissimilar ways, thus generating different types of customer engagement value for the firm. Fiske's relational models framework is eminently suitable for studying customer-service firm engagement because it is widely adopted in the social sciences as a rigorously developed framework for conceptualizing social interactions.

The article bridges Fiske's relational models framework and Kumar et al.'s customer engagement value framework, and conceptually demonstrates that customers employing different relational models for the service firm are likely to generate different types of customer engagement value for the firm.

The article demonstrates conceptually that customers' relational models, schemata, and scripts influence how consumers engage with the firm and the type of customer engagement value accruing to the firm.

This research has implications for service firms' relationship strategies. First, service marketers can determine the desired customer engagement value(s) and then craft their customer relationship strategy so that it maximizes those engagement value(s). The article suggests relationship strategies that service firms may implement for encouraging customers to adopt different relational models.

No research has bridged relational models theories and customer engagement value theories.

Relational engagement is offered as a framework to describe how buyers and sellers conduct exchange. Relational engagement is conceptualized as a higher-order construct comprising three dimensions: legal bonds, knowledge exchange and co-production. This paper aims to examine the efficacy of the construct by testing its influence on buyer–perceived seller brand equity.

An online survey of 401 US-based industrial buyers was conducted. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Empirical analysis supports the proposed conceptualization of relational engagement, as well as its influence on seller brand equity through influencing buyer-perceived relationship effectiveness.

Relational engagement offers a template to sellers for engaging organizational buyers. A relational engagement strategy has favorable implications for seller brand equity.

Relational engagement offers a comprehensive strategic perspective on inter-organizational exchange, moving beyond tactical approaches. The framework reflects the continuum of exchange, incorporating transactional-dominant and relationship-dominant forms of inter-organizational marketing practices.

For the continued vitality and success of small businesses, it is important to gain a deeper understanding of the effective behaviors of small business owners. The main purpose of this paper is to further the understanding of the relational leadership framework as used by a successful small business owner.

Data on the small business owner participating in this study were gathered via formal and informal interviews.

Results of this paper suggest that the profit potential of an organization as well as employee retention can be improved through leadership that embraces the five key components of the relational leadership framework: inclusiveness, empowerment, purposefulness, ethics, and process‐orientation.

Given the challenges of owning and operating a small firm in today's competitive business climate, it is worthwhile for entrepreneurs to use this case study as an example in effectively managing their organizations.

An important contribution of this paper is the identification of strategies related to the relational leadership framework as applied to the small business environment.

The purpose of this paper is to present a framework – the Relationality Framework – for elaborating relational behaviour, in response to calls to address the ontological weaknesses identified in the extant value and value creation literature.

The social philosophical understanding of interaction as an organic mode of social organisation, upon which the Relationality Framework is based, supersedes the economistic (mechanistic) understanding of interaction as a means of connecting otherwise independent actors. In foregrounding the relationality of interaction, the authors are inspired by Grönroos and Voima’s (2013) conceptualisation of spheres of value generation to conceptualise the intersubjective dynamics and domains invoked in direct interaction.

The Relationality Framework identifies distinct relational concepts that build on service logic’s specificity and conceptualisation at the level of direct interactions between service providers and customers. In particular, this paper develops the concept of “relationality” using the three domains in any interaction of I, Other and We.

The Relationality Framework provides sound conceptual support for extending the theoretical and practical analysis of the value creation processes of the customer and of the firm and for the purposeful management of relationships to enhance value creation by both.

This work examines the relationship between internal and relational capabilities and the creation of value to the end consumer in the case of the process of receipt, manufacture, and delivery of orders within the supply chain. This work develops a methodology to identify operations that generate core competences and those that do not, with the aim of improving the management of the supply chain.

This work analyses the order fulfillment process in a representative sample of firms operating in a region of Spain. To accomplish the research objectives, a personal survey was conducted using a questionnaire to evaluate 13 activities of the order distribution process in the supply chain.

The results of the study reveal that internal and relational capabilities explain the creation of value to the consumer. They also identify two groups of operations in line with their ability to be sources of relational or internal competitive advantage. With regard to the activities, it was shown that there are some activities that form part of the core competences, while others constitute non-core competences. This work demonstrates that the core activities generate higher value to the end consumer; however, it also shows how important the non-core activities may be to the creation of value.

The work offers orientation as to how the analyzed process should be redesigned to obtain a competitive advantage. Thus, this higher value to the end consumer will enable the firm to reduce prices or at least maintain them, in which case the firm will be able to offer additional services that differentiate it from the competition.

Finally, although the literature contains some works that analyze capabilities or relational performance, none to date have used variables such as activity simplification, integration and relational competitiveness in the framework of relational capabilities in the order fulfillment process. Another significant innovation of this work is the analysis at operation level, in which 13 activities belonging to an important process in the supply chain are analyzed.

Many transactions in the business‐to‐business‐field are governed on a relational basis. In such long‐term business relationships, the object of exchange is but one determinant of relationship success. Soft factors such as the customer‐directed behaviors a supplier demonstrates are generally believed to be a major determinant of performance variables. Based on the relational exchange framework, this paper examines the impact of relational behaviors on relationship quality in professional service relationships. An empirical study conducted among 206 purchasers of market research information provides evidence that supplier behaviors such as role integrity, flexibility, or solidarity have an important impact on different dimensions of customer‐perceived relationship quality (satisfaction, trust, and commitment).

The paper aims to investigate how business-to-business key accounts deal with the consequent tension between cooperation and competition, and how they can resolve that relational paradox, using framework contracts.

The paper argues that the role played by framework contracts can be ambivalent: as a tool to define cooperation with suppliers while simultaneously organising competition within suppliers, but by formalising such ambivalence, it does help to ease the tensions that may arise. To clarify such a conceptual and counter-intuitive ambivalence, the paper uses a case study that shows how framework contracts are used to solve the inherent tensions between cooperation with “preferred suppliers” and their price competition with invited “challengers”, in a competitive bidding situation.

This study is a first step in an investigation of the role of framework contracts in a customer-supplier relationship, aiming to explain their use as they highlight the “coopetitive” nature of the relationship, turning it into something tangible and psychologically acceptable.

Because of the complexity of vertical “coopetition” and the research method adopted, the findings may not be generally applicable.

This research offers an enlarged perspective for suppliers as well as customers to think over their own relationships (in an industrial setting).

Little research has been conducted to date on vertical coopetition and the role and effects of framework contracts in the context of such complex customer-supplier relationships. This case study offers insights for practising managers and academics into the effective use of framework contracts.

Legal remedies are incorporated into international construction joint ventures (ICJVs) to mitigate contractual breaches. The effectiveness of remedies is predicated on two conditions; the comprehensiveness of the contract and its enforceability within the jurisdiction of interpretation. Relational-related weaknesses contribute to contracting parties placing a premium on the contract's capacity for mediating the relationship. However, contracts are not always enforceable. This study aims to examine means by which joint venture relational governance can be maintained under conditions of minimal legal recourse.

A relational contracting (RC) theory was used as the theoretical underpinning of the paper. Data were collected and analyzed following a multiple-case study approach from case projects in which ICJVs' was used.

The findings reveal (1) 17 relational and contractual governance problems; the main six being contractual flexibility, contractual joint venture system, contract reviewing, project conflict, national culture and leader–follower transgressions; (2) relational and contractual governance problems are managed differently, depending on financing sources and partners' national culture; and (3) that a developed RC-based framework comprising four stages is able to facilitate relational and contractual governance in ICJVs.

This study is novel in providing a guided approach to developing non-legal remedies for the mitigation of contractual breaches in ICJVs, grounded in theory and contextualized for the construction sector.

Building on the complementarity nature of extant dyadic and portfolio level alliance research, this paper discusses the role of alliance capability and relational quality as antecedents of alliance performance. Although prior research focused extensively on the influence of dyadic issues on alliance performance, more recent studies focus on firm-level capabilities to manage sets of alliances. We specify an integrated framework that merges these two previously separated streams of research and discuss how firm-level alliance capabilities affect dyadic level relational quality. The framework suggests that relational quality mediates between both alliance capability and alliance performance and provides a detailed discussion on how firm-level mechanisms improve the quality of dyadic relationships. We also discuss implications and options for future research.