Managing business relationships - David Ford

No company is an island in the world of business. Each company is locked into a complex network of relationships with its customers, suppliers and other counterparts. What happens in these relationships is critical to the success of any business. Managing a company's relationships and its position in the network is a central, but often misunderstood aspect of business.

This new edition of Managing Business Relationships aims to help managers and students understand the reality of business networks and how to manage in them. It has been entirely rewritten to include the latest thinking and research from the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) Group and includes new chapters on Intermediation in Business Networks, the Economics of Business Relationships and the Practice of Business Networking.

Features:

Provides a structured way to understand business networks and their meaning for the practicing manager.

Offers a complete analysis of management in different relationships including those with customers, suppliers, distributors and development counterparts.

Presents a practical analysis of the problems and choices that managers face in developing and changing their relationships and a guide to the critical skills of business networking.

David Ford is Professor Emeritus at the University of Bath. His work involves examining how the relationships between companies develop and how they can be managed effectively. It also involves issues of technological development within and between companies. He is currently working as part of the team on the "Newmark" project. This study is looking at ways in which complex networks of companies operate and how companies behave within them.

Lars-Erik Gadde is Professor of industrial marketing at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg. His research interest is focused on the exchange processes among companies in business networks. These processes are analysed from two perspectives. The first concerns purchasing behaviour and purchasing strategies on the buying side, while the second deals with distribution strategies and distribution system dynamics on the selling side.

Hakan Hakansson is Professor in International Management, Norwegian School of Management, BI, Oslo. He has been involved in a large number of different projects ranging from long term engagement (several years) to short term teaching sessions for companies such as ABB, Alcatel, Ericsson, Euroc, Grnges, IFL, Jrnia, NCC, Nutek, SIAB, Skanska and others.

Ivan Snehota is Professor of Marketing at the University of Lugano, Switzerland. He initiated research focusing on international markets for industrial goods and became in 1976 one of the founders of an international research project on industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP). Since then he has dedicated much of his time to teaching in undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate courses and resumed research related to market relationships.