Publicação
The role of relationships in the development of firms’ capabilities: evaluating and acting on a portfolio of customers
| Resumo: | The concept of connectivity between inter-firm relationships underlies the network view of markets. Dyadic relationships are partly counterpart specific and affect each other. It is usually stressed, within the industrial networks approach, that the heterogeneity of relationships and their specificity are a source problems and opportunities for management (Håkansson and Snehota, 1995). In this context, we can expect that setting priorities between relationships should be one of the central issues for managers to influence their firms’ trajectories. In this paper, we discuss this issue considering two inter-related dimensions of firms’ trajectories: the counterpart/relationship dimension and the production system (activity & resource) dimension. Changes in both dimensions and development of capabilities make sense in a temporal context. Therefore, we conducted longitudinal case studies of producers of moulds for the injection of plastics, analysing how their contrasting trajectories in terms of product specialization can be related to how variety was used and learned in both dimensions. Our study suggests that the relevance of the interdependencies and variety found within a set of relationships should be seen in the context of firm’s idiosyncratic capabilities, which include their interpretations and experiences in using and influencing variety. Awareness of this could be important when managers evaluate the composition of their firms’ portfolio of relationships with customers and act to influence its evolution. This is also important because its may propagate and impact on the firm’ relationships with other direct and indirect counterparts.. |
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| Autores principais: | Mota, João |
| Outros Autores: | Castro, Luis Mota de |
| Assunto: | Business Management Firms' Relationship Network Markets Managers |
| Ano: | 2002 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | documento de conferência |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade de Lisboa |
| Idioma: | português |
| Origem: | Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa |
| Resumo: | The concept of connectivity between inter-firm relationships underlies the network view of markets. Dyadic relationships are partly counterpart specific and affect each other. It is usually stressed, within the industrial networks approach, that the heterogeneity of relationships and their specificity are a source problems and opportunities for management (Håkansson and Snehota, 1995). In this context, we can expect that setting priorities between relationships should be one of the central issues for managers to influence their firms’ trajectories. In this paper, we discuss this issue considering two inter-related dimensions of firms’ trajectories: the counterpart/relationship dimension and the production system (activity & resource) dimension. Changes in both dimensions and development of capabilities make sense in a temporal context. Therefore, we conducted longitudinal case studies of producers of moulds for the injection of plastics, analysing how their contrasting trajectories in terms of product specialization can be related to how variety was used and learned in both dimensions. Our study suggests that the relevance of the interdependencies and variety found within a set of relationships should be seen in the context of firm’s idiosyncratic capabilities, which include their interpretations and experiences in using and influencing variety. Awareness of this could be important when managers evaluate the composition of their firms’ portfolio of relationships with customers and act to influence its evolution. This is also important because its may propagate and impact on the firm’ relationships with other direct and indirect counterparts.. |
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