foreign partners. But every culture (not just those in foreign countries)
has its different language, style, internal politics and hidden decision
rules, which, until understood, exact a high price.
●A structural learning process. Companies enter alliances because the part-
ners can do certain things better than they can. From the beginning,
therefore, it is helpful to codify and to transfer knowledge gained from
the partner to those who can best use it. Periodically, representatives of
all units on the alliance team need to be brought together to share
results from the process and to design further steps to gain more
knowledge.
It is clear that such alliances require a totally different management
approach from that which used to prevail in more traditional ‘sub-
contract’ type relationships. In these ‘network’ or ‘virtual’ organiza-
tions the need to create a ‘boundaryless’ business with joint decision
making, complete transparency on costs and a sharing of risks and
regards is essential.
The organizational change that is implicit within this new style of
relationship is profound. The need to fuse together processes across
partners’ boundaries – whilst still recognizing the essential inde-
pendence of the entities – is paramount.
Figure 3.4 represents the transition that is required from the
classic arms’-length buyer/supplier interface where the only
contact focuses around the transaction (typically a salesperson and
a buyer negotiating a deal) to a multi-level partnership.
In the partnership model there is an emphasis on joint teams,
which themselves are cross-functional, working to establish ‘seam-
176 Relationship Marketing
FROM TOR&D Marketing R&D Marketing
Logistics Operations Logistics Operations
Information
SystemsInformation
SystemsInformation
SystemsInformation
SystemsCustomer
ManagementSupplier
DevelopmentSales PurchasingSupplier Customer Supplier Customer
Figure 3.4 Creating closer relationships with supply chain partners.