B2B relationship management: a framework to explore the impact of collaboration

This article aims to propose an integrated framework, based on two levels, able to characterise collaborative relation between two or more partners in a supply chain, evaluating their related performances. In the first level, related to the context point of view, the most common parameters, identified from a literature review, characterising a relationship between two partners, have been used to build an integrated analysis framework. The second level is related to the performance side and has been achieved through two main attributes: the perceived satisfaction of the relation and its perceived effectiveness. The implementation of the approach has been achieved through a survey of different companies, so as to propose a first analysis on how the characteristics of a relation impact its performance. A new dashboard is considered as an operative tool of the proposed approach, which allows to follow all the attributes which best characterise each relation type, as well as the sensitivity of the perceived performance for each attribute.