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Today, more than ever, organisational leaders must be able to orchestrate winning, innovative partnerships with external parties if they are to get ahead and stay ahead. Leaders must act as influential connectors who can win the minds and trust of those people they potentially have no direct control over – but who are nonetheless paramount to success.
Too often, however, organisations in dominant positions manage their external partners like vendors rather than strategic partners. This destructive approach causes organisations ‘to play suppliers and collaborators off against each other and to avoid partnerships that require some power sharing’. True partnerships can’t function as predefined contracts that depend on maximising control – especially those partnerships where innovation is at stake. This merely undermines real value creation and raises the risk of conflict.
True partnerships exhibit a number of special characteristics:
Sources: Gomes-Casseres, B. (2011) A Partnership Is Not a Purchase Order, HBR, May 16; Hughes, J. (2008) From Vendor to Partner: Why and How Leading Companies Collaborate with Suppliers for Competitive Advantage, Global Business and Organizational Excellence, 27(3), 21-37.
Consider the extent to which you treat collaborations as true partnerships as opposed to contractual, vendor-type relationships? How do you manage risks in important business-to-business partnerships – what works well and what do you need to improve?
The concept describes the type of connections and associations between buyers and suppliers, and discusses some of the relationship models and their advantages and weaknesses.
This concept reviews collaborative relationships and explored how they have evolved from transaction process-based agreements to collaborative processes based on trust and information-sharing.
The concept reviews integration and cooperation in supply chains and discusses the professional tools, business evidence and critical success factors of this process.
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