How can managers determine which types of partnerships will provide the best pay-offs? This book presents a partnership model which provides a structured and repeatable process to effectively and efficiently build and maintain tailored business relationships that may become an asset for executives looking for competitive advantage.

A practical guide for building and maintaining high performance business relationships Every business sinks or swims on the quality of its relationships and alliances, whether they are between management and staff, departments, subsidiaries, partners, suppliers, or customers. It's no wonder then that building and maintaining high performance relationships has emerged as one of the hottest topics in today's hypercompetitive, global business environment. This indispensable guide will help you to understand what high performance relationships are and how they work. Written by a distinguished pioneer in the field, it explains what a high performance business culture populated by a fully engaged workforce looks like. It describes simple, proven strategies and techniques for implementing and sustaining high performance relationships, both internally, within your organizations, and externally. And, it details the many benefits that await business organizations of any size that place greater emphasis on relationship performance management. Offers simple and effective methods for building successful business and organizational relationships Concise and easy to read, this book provides a common language and practice for high performance relationship management and critical change management Arms you with an array of tested-in-the-trenches tools for building robust and sustainable high performance business relationships

A guide to using positive organizational change to do more with less, from the acclaimed author of The Southwest Airlines Way. Whether from customers, supply-chain partners, policymakers, or regulators, organizations in virtually every industry are facing calls to do more with less. They are feeling compelled to provide higher-quality outcomes, more rapidly, at a lower cost. This book offers a road-tested approach for delivering these outcomes through positive organizational change. Its message comes just in time—for too many companies have gone the way of low-road strategies, such as cutting pay and perks, and working harder not smarter. Drawing on her pathbreaking research, Jody Hoffer Gittell reveals that high performance is fundamentally relational—rooted in both human and social capital. Based on this insight, she provides a unique model that will help companies build meaningful relationships among colleagues, develop smarter work processes, and design organizational structures fit for today’s pressure test. By following four organizations on their change journeys, she illustrates how “relational coordination” unfolds in real-world settings. In addition, tools for change guide readers as they learn how to implement this new model in their own workplaces.

Everyone knows that relationships are critical to business success, but no-one has provided a simple system to turn contacts and acquaintances into valuable assets -- until now. The first systematic program for advancing business relationships. In five easy-to-follow steps, the book shows how to transform any casual business relationship into a valuable source for revenue, leads, and advice. Ed Wallace combines memorable anecdotes with a clear theoretical framework that shows individuals how to leverage their hard business skills with the often-overlooked soft skills of rela-tionship building. Surveyed executives say they need this book. In a recent survey, 88 percent of executives indicated that the strength of their client, cus-tomer, and referral relationships was critical to achieving their goals each year. But only 25 percent of those same executives said they had a formal process for planning, managing, and growing business relation-ships and 73 percent of the group surveyed said they would be very interested in reading a book on this topic. This book delivers the process that so many people and organisations need.

A unique insight into corporate team building within a global giant. Lessons from Mars challenges the prevailing orthodoxy of corporate team building and offers an alternative framework along with a set of tools and techniques. Based on the author's 20-plus years of experience working with teams and six years of research specifically on Mars teams, the book offers a unique view into this closely-held private company and how it has unlocked the power of collaboration. '...it turns out that while women are from Venus, valuable lessons in corporate management are from Mars, Inc.' Roy Sekoff, Founding Editor, The Huffington Post

The notion of sustainability continues to increase in importance for businesses. Today consumers pay attention to the environmental impacts and social consequences of the products they use. Consequently, an increase in interest in the topic from an industry perspective has been observed and the topic is considered a megatrend in today’s global economy worthy of additional academic inquiry. This dissertation looks into the role that sustainability plays for companies in the current business environment and its effect on supply chain relationships. This book highlights the effects that introducing sustainability to a supply chain relationship has on the dynamics and structure of these relationships and provides a novel methodological approach to examine the issue. For the analysis, a theoretical framework of current management theories is assembled and the insights of each theory for sustainability in supply chain management are detailed. Through a qualitative and a quantitative research phase, the findings of this dissertation show, that sustainability and collaborative behavior in supply chain relationships positively affect each other. This manuscript provides insights for both research and practice. Theoretical and managerial implications are detailed and the findings are mirrored with the derived theoretical framework. This book therefore helps to promote the effective implementation of sustainability in supply chain management practice and elaborates the theory around the topic.