Bas Hillebrand

Trust, Contract and Relationship Development

This article contributes to the debate on the relation between trust and control in the management of inter-organizational relations. More specifically, we focus on the question how trust and formal contract are related. While there have been studies on whether trust and contract are substitutes or complements, they offer little insight into the dynamic interaction between the two. They fail to answer, first, whether contract precedes trust or follows it, in other words, what causal relationship exists between the concepts; second, how and why trust and contract can substitute or complement each other; and third, how the various combinations of trust and contract affect a relationship’s development and outcome. In search of answers, we conducted longitudinal case studies to reveal the relationship between trust, contract and relationship outcome in complex inter-firm relationships. We find trust and contract to be both complements and substitutes and find that a close study of a contract’s content offers alternative insight into the presence and use of contracts in inter-firm relationships.

The relationship between internal and external cooperation: literature review and propositions

Over time, the management literature has paid much attention to the topic of cooperation. The literature on cooperation can be divided into two broad parts, with one part focusing on cooperation within organizations (internal cooperation) and another addressing cooperation between organizations (external cooperation). Surprisingly, only little attention has been devoted to the relationship between internal and external cooperation, while there are clear indications that both types of cooperation are related. This article explores the nature of the relationship between internal and external cooperation by looking for clues in the existing literature on both types of cooperation as well as related subjects. We classify the findings of our literature review into five perspectives on the relationship between internal and external cooperation: (1) the involvement of both internal and external partners, (2) communication patterns, (3) organizational learning, (4) organizational norms and (5) internal cooperation as a coordination mechanism for external cooperation. Next, we compare the various perspectives and conclude by describing how these perspectives might be used for fruitful future investigations into the link between internal and external cooperation.

What Makes Product Development Market Oriented? Towards a Conceptual Framework

While there is quite some literature on the relationship between market orientation and product development, it is still unclear what market-oriented product development really is. In this article the authors present a conceptual framework detailing the elements of market-oriented product development and the relationships between these elements. More specifically, market-oriented product development is conceptualised as a combination of specific capabilities and market information processing activities. These capabilities encapsulate the values and norms, knowledge and skills, technical and managerial knowledge systems, which enable learning about markets through information processing behaviour in product development and improve this market learning behaviour. As such it is argued that market-oriented product development may be regarded as an organisational learning capability.

Consumer perceptions of service constellations: implications for service innovation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the service constellation perspective affects innovation strategies and potentially contributes to the innovation literature, proposing a research agenda.Design/methodology/approach – By analyzing the notion of a service constellation, the authors provide an overview of major implications for service innovation research and practice.Findings – Firms and service innovation researchers need to focus on the perceived consumer value of the constellation rather than on individual services. The authors illustrate how service innovation from the constellation perspective requires coordination and synchronization between projects and different approaches to portfolio management and screening.Originality/value – Adoption of the service constellation perspective creates new opportunities.

Green New Product Development: The Pivotal Role of Product Greenness

This study aims to develop an integrative framework for green new product development (NPD) based on the existing literature and to empirically study the applicability of that integrative framework. This study answers three calls: for research that is rooted in a traditional NPD perspective, for research that integrates marketing aspects in a model of green NPD, and for research that acknowledges variations in greenness. The results from eight case studies in two industries (i.e., the chemical and food industries) substantiate the integrative framework and suggest that it provides a good basis for understanding green NPD. The study demonstrates that green NPD is not fundamentally different from traditional NPD but does contain features and underlying mechanisms that reflect the increased complexity of green NPD. The framework incorporates the targeting and positioning of green product innovations, thus establishing itself as a holistic framework. Most importantly, the study shows how greenness plays a pivotal role in tying the various elements of the framework together. The realized greenness of a new product is a central concept that helps managers understand complex relationships among industry type, green targeting, and green positioning.

Dealing with downstream customers: an exploratory study

Purpose – In B2B markets, the demand for a suppliers products is derived from demand further down the supply chain. This complexity poses several challenges for B2B firms, especially when they are located near the beginning of a supply chain. This study aims to investigate to what extent firms near the beginning of the supply chain are oriented towards downstream customers, the problems they encounter in extending their market orientation to include downstream customers, and how they deal with these problems.Design/methodology/approach – This study uses an exploratory research method. It is based on in‐depth interviews with 31 managers from 21 upstream suppliers.Findings – The findings suggest that firms are aware of the importance of downstream customers, but frequently fail to establish effective relationships with them. The paper identifies several barriers that hamper an orientation on downstream customers and shows how firms may deal with these barriers.Research limitations/implications – The paper ...

Stretching Concepts: The Role of Competing Pressures and Decoupling in the Evolution of Organization Concepts

To contribute to the understanding of the evolution of organization concepts, this article focuses on how consultants respond to competing pressures during the maturity and decline phases of an initially popular concept. Management consultants are important fashion setters, but the actual strategies they use to deal with the pressures to remain legitimate, increase efficiency and differentiate themselves from competitors remain unclear. Such supply-side dynamics likely influence how organization concepts evolve and are relevant for understanding how management knowledge may survive a fashion boom and bust. Using interview and print media data from 32 consultants from 14 consultancies, we identify seven response strategies, and show how these are associated with multiple pressures, and comprise different implications for the evolution of a concept. We argue that this variety of responses is essential to better understand the evolution of organization concepts and opens several fruitful research directions.

Is more customer control of services always better

Purpose – Research on empowerment and service co-production assumed that customers want more control and that more control is better. An empirical test of this assumption, however, is lacking. The purpose of this paper is to test this assumption by not only focussing on the customer’s capacity and opportunity for control, but also taking into account the customer’s desire for control. Design/methodology/approach – This study uses an experiment employing video clips depicting a service encounter in a banking context in which control beliefs are manipulated. Findings – This study shows that more control in services is not always better because individuals vary in their desire for control; that state measures of control are effective predictors of relevant attitudinal and behavioral effects like satisfaction and loyalty, and that the mechanism which produces these effects is the consistency between control beliefs. Research limitations/implications – Future research on customer empowerment and service co-pro...

The relationship between internal and external cooperation

Over time, the management literature has paid much attention to the topic of cooperation. The literature on cooperation can be divided into two broad parts, with one part focusing on cooperation within organizations (internal cooperation) and another addressing cooperation between organizations (external cooperation). Surprisingly, only little attention has been devoted to the relationship between internal and external cooperation, while there are clear indications that both types of cooperation are related. This article explores the nature of the relationship between internal and external cooperation by looking for clues in the existing literature on both types of cooperation as well as related subjects. We classify the findings of our literature review into five perspectives on the relationship between internal and external cooperation: (1) the involvement of both internal and external partners, (2) communication patterns, (3) organizational learning, (4) organizational norms and (5) internal cooperation as a coordination mechanism for external cooperation. Next, we compare the various perspectives and conclude by describing how these perspectives might be used for fruitful future investigations into the link between internal and external cooperation.

Consumer control in service recovery: beyond decisional control

Purpose Focusing on decisional control of the outcome provides only a partial picture of how firms may handle customer complaints and ignores many (alternative) opportunities to recover the relationship with the customer when service delivery fails. The purpose of this paper is to introduce other types of control and explore their effects. Design/methodology/approach This paper conducts a field study using survey instruments to collect data from real consumers, which are subsequently analyzed with structural equations modeling. Findings The main conclusion of this study is that there is more to control than having a choice. Different types of control have differential main effects: behavioral control affects distributive justice, cognitive control affects procedural justice and decisional control affects interactional justice (which in turn affect satisfaction and loyalty). Research limitations/implications Service recovery research should include behavioral, cognitive and decisional control of the service recovery as aspects of the firm’s organizational response to customer complaints. The effects of these customer control types on satisfaction and loyalty are mediated by dimensions of justice. Practical implications Firms should offer complaining customers information to interpret and appraise the failure (cognitive control), opportunities to personally take action and influence the recovery (behavioral control), and choices in the recovery process and outcome (decisional control). Originality/value This study is the first to offer a comprehensive investigation of the subtle interrelationships between types of control and dimensions of justice in a service recovery context.