Competitive channel relationship management: When resellers establish competing manufacturer relationships

The focus of this study is the impact of competitive relationships on the effectiveness of channel relationship management strategies. We argue that the characteristics of a reseller??s relationship with alternative manufacturers influence his/her evaluation of the relationship with a focal manufacturer. We extend previous research by suggesting that the relative levels of channel conflict and information exchange are critical determinants of relationship outcomes. Building on previous literature on customer satisfaction, we argue that this relation is asymmetric; improvements in the levels of channel conflict and information exchange will have a greater effect when these are below the competitor??s comparative level than when these are above. We find support for these hypotheses in a sample of 491 observations corresponding to different resellers selling a manufacturer??s product line across several countries. Our results underscore the need for suppliers to go beyond conflict minimization and information exchange policies across relationships and consider individual-level competitive effects for each relationship.     

Facilitating Collaboration with Problem Structuring Methods: A Case Study of an Inter-Organisational Construction Partnership

Despite the potential of inter-organisational collaboration to create ‘collaborative advantage’ among participant organisations, not all collaborations realise this potential due to the complexities and challenges faced by potential collaborators. To address these difficulties and increase the likelihood of collaborative success, different forms of intervention approaches for fostering inter-organisational collaboration has been advocated by collaboration researchers and practitioners. These intervention approaches all facilitate interaction and consensus formation among the participants. However their ‘added value’ is procedural rather than substantive in nature. They do not incorporate tools which can enable participants to structure the complexity of the web of factors that are implicated in their collaboration, and thus make it more manageable. This paper argues that problem structuring methods (PSMs), a family of model-based approaches to group decision and negotiation support, are a form of intervention which can provide a balanced attention to both the process and the content of inter-organisational collaboration, and reports the experience of applying a particular PSM to an inter-organisational collaborative partnership in the UK construction industry. Drawing on the rich data generated from the intervention, the paper discusses the impact of the PSM in supporting the joint appreciation activities carried out by collaborators to address their problematic situation. Implications of the experience for the research and practice of PSMs within collaborative contexts are then presented.     

GSS for Multi-Organizational Collaboration: Reflections on Process and Content

Multi-organizational collaboration has become the norm for modern organizations as they seek to survive and prosper in increasingly turbulent times. These collaborations can take many forms, but face problems due to different management styles, different cultures, and different operating modes of the participant organizations. These differences usually cause difficulties for the multi-organizational teams that are set up to make the collaboration operational. Group Support Systems (GSSs) is one possible way of supporting these multi-organization collaboration teams (MCTs). This paper builds and describes a conceptual framework that highlights the critical characteristics of these teams and how GSS might support their activities. The framework is based on a detailed analysis of three case studies using three different GSSs.     

Early Warning Systems for Currency Crises with Real-Time Data

Open Economies Review - This paper investigates the performance of early warning systems for currency crises in real-time, using forecasts of indicators that are available at the moment predictions...     

A Comparison of Menu Costs in Open and Closed Economies with a Mixed Industrial Structure

In this paper we develop Dixon and Hansen (1997) to allow for two-sector small open economy in which the non-traded sector is monopolistic. The closed economy version of the model generalises Dixon/Hansen to allow for diminishing returns on the traded sector. We compare the short-run impact of menu costs on the economy and also the size of menu costs needed to sustain nominal rigidity in both the open and closed economies. We find that whilst the welfare gains from monetary expansion are of a similar magnitude, nominal rigidity can occur for much smaller menu costs than in the closed economy case. Hence we argue that menu costs and the resultant nominal rigidities are more likely to be important in an open economy.