Abstract
In customer-supplier relationships individuals representing respective companies interact to solve a number of
adaptive problems and how the relationships will develop depends on the solutions they jointly devise. Their interactive
meetings are characterized by conditions of limited time, information, and processing capacity that render
extensive information gathering and analytical cognitive elaboration impracticable and lead the individual actors
to adopt behaviors based on rules and heuristics. In this paper, we review the extant literature on heuristics in management
and present the findings of an exploratory study on the use of heuristics in interactions in customer supplier
relationships. We found that preparing for meetings and during them actors use six sets of heuristics. Heuristics
used in interaction during the meetings concern the degree of adaptation to the specific counterpart, how to
react to unexpected developments, and a general code of conduct. In preparing for meetings, heuristics are used to
define the information to collect, its sources, and how to use it. Our study suggests heuristics used are personal, originate
in both organizational norms and personal experience, and are seldom shared with others.
Lingua originale | English |
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pagine (da-a) | 26-37 |
Numero di pagine | 12 |
Rivista | Industrial Marketing Management |
DOI | |
Stato di pubblicazione | Pubblicato - 2015 |
Keywords
- Heuristics, Customer-supplier relationships, Interaction, Cognition, Actors in business relationships