Relationship keyness: The underlying concept for different forms of key relationship management

Industrial Marketing Management 38 (2009) 513–519

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Industrial Marketing Management

Relationship keyness: The underlying concept for different forms of key relationship management Björn Sven Ivens a,⁎, Catherine Pardo b,1, Robert Salle b,2, Bernard Cova c,3 a b c

Otto-Friedrich-University, Faculty of Social Studies and Economics, Feldkirchenstrasse 21, 96052 Bamberg, Germany E.M.LYON, Marketing Department, 23, Av Guy de Collongue, BP 174, 69132 Lyon Ecully Cedex, France Euromed Business School, Domaine de Luminy - BP 921, 13288 Marseille Cedex 9, France

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 1 March 2008 Available online 7 June 2009 Keywords: Strategic relationships Alliance manager Key account management IT industry Resources Keyness

a b s t r a c t For companies, relationships with external actors may constitute intangible assets. Many firms have put in place key account management programs in order to pay sufficient attention to strategically important customers and the marketing literature has studied such programs. However, a company's relationship portfolio also comprises relationships with other types of actors. The objective of this paper is to show that – across the different types of external relationships a company may develop – some relationships have more importance than others and, hence, are key. The authors argue that, as a consequence, the keyness of certain relationships has led to the emergence of approaches which can be referred to as key relationship management. For this purpose, the authors first present empirical material on the management of relationships between companies and their partners in strategic alliances from the French IT sector. They then discuss the concept of keyness as well as the common characteristics of different forms of key relationship management such as key account management, key supplier management and strategic alliance management. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Resource-based theories argue that a company's performance depends on its ability to combine different types of resources into offerings which create value for some market segments (e.g. Hunt, 2000). Relationships are often considered to be potential resources. In the past, marketing scholars have mainly discussed one type of relationships and the fact that they can be valuable for a firm, i.e. supplier–customer relationships. For example, the literature on key account management deals with management concepts put in place by many companies in which certain customers who have strategic importance for their suppliers receive a specific, adapted treatment (e.g. Homburg, Workman, & Jensen, 2002; Pardo, Salle, & Spencer, 1995). Researchers in this field have presented key account management as a specific management approach which differs from other forms of customer management. In recent years, the fact that relationships with certain external actors may be more important than those maintained with others has also been discussed with respect to other stakeholders such as suppliers (e.g. Wagner &

⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +41 21 692 3461. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (B.S. Ivens), [email protected] (C. Pardo), [email protected] (R. Salle), [email protected] (B. Cova). 1 Tel.: +33 478 33 77 78. 2 Tel.: +33 478 33 77 74. 3 Tel.: +33 491 827 946. 0019-8501/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.indmarman.2009.05.002

Johnson, 2004). The question which arises from this observation is whether the management approaches developed in different areas – and through which companies differentiate their interaction behavior towards external actors belonging to the same stakeholder group (e.g. customers, suppliers etc.) – do have certain characteristics in common and can, hence, be studied from one common perspective. In this paper we argue for this proposition. More precisely we describe an emerging form of relationship management, i.e. the management of partner relationships in strategic alliances, and compare this management concept with similar concepts such as key account and key supplier management. Our purpose is to identify and describe the underlying notion of relationship keyness, i.e. the fact that irrespective of the type of external interaction partner certain relationships have higher importance for companies than others, and to explain that relationship keyness has led to the emergence of an overarching management concept, key relationship management. From our vantage point, key relationship management is applied to different contexts such as buyer–supplier or alliance partner relationships but follows the same principles. For this purpose we present the results of an empirical study of strategic alliance partner management programs in the French IT industry. These results allow comparing alliance management programs with other forms of key relationship management programs. Based on our observations we describe the concepts of keyness and key relationship management. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: First, we discuss the case of alliance management, a concept which has received

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very little attention in the academic literature. We explain the context in which the alliance management role has developed. In particular, we provide an overview of the characteristics and practices of roles in charge of the management of relationships with key partners as they appear in the case of integrated solutions in the information technology industry (IT industry). We chose to focus on the IT industry for four main reasons: (1) In the IT industry the number of strategic alliances between competitors is particularly high; (2) IT companies most often propose integrated solutions by combining hardware, software and integration; (3) the management role in charge of alliance management exists formally and it is, hence, possible to identify the people working in this role as key informants; (4) these roles have developed over the past ten years whereas in other industries they are either inexistent or considerably younger. In a second step, we present the results of an empirical study conducted among 70 French managers from national and international companies in charge of managing alliances. The objective is to describe their role, their position within the organization and the nature of their involvement in the relationship. Building on these empirical results and drawing upon resource-based theories we then argue how – through the concept of relationship keyness – alliance management and related concepts can be classified into the broader category of key relationship management approaches. Finally, we present directions for future research on these concepts. 2. Integrated solutions and the need for partnering Historically, individual products have often constituted the major element of exchange between industrial companies. But many firms have modified and extended their offers. They now strive to ensure profitability through additional services around the product (Anderson & Narus, 1995; Davies, 2001; Sawhney, 2006). Often they have “gone downstream”, toward the customer, through different types of vertical integration: “They've moved beyond the factory gate to tap into the valuable economic activity that occurs throughout the entire product life” (Wise & Baumgartner, 1999, p. 133). This evolution has led companies to propose solutions which represent a high level of adaptation to customer needs (customization) as well as a high level of integration of the suppliers' offerings (Sawhney, 2006; Stremersch, Wuyts, & Frambach, 2001). Hence, when referring to solutions, one refers to an offer that incorporates several elements integrated in the customers value chain (Oliva & Kallenberg, 2003) and which form a whole: one integrated solution to a specific customer's clearly defined problem (Ceresale & Stone, 2004; Davies, Brady, & Hodbay, 2007; Sawhney, 2006; Stremersch & Tellis, 2002). Such an evolution of the offer has important consequences for the supplier's organization. It must move from a product-centric logic to a customer-centric logic (Davies, 2001; Galbraith, 2005). Taking the example of the IT sector, Davies et al. (2007) explain: “In a shift away from traditional structures, product units are being reorganized to become back-end providers of standardized and replicable components that are combined into solutions provided by newly-formed customer-facing units. These front-end units are based on temporary projects which are continuously formed, combined, and disbanded around each customer's need for a solution” (p.185). For these authors there is a transition taking place between two contrasting types of organization for the provision of integrated solutions: the systems seller and the systems integrator. A systems seller is a “vertical integrated firm that produces all or most of the product and service component required for integrated solutions provision. A pure systems seller's offering is based on a single vendor design incorporating internally developed technology, products and proprietary interfaces” (p.187). A systems integrator is “a prime contractor organization responsible for the overall system design and integrating product and service components supplied by a variety of external suppliers into a functioning system” (p. 188). When making

the move from one approach to the other, many companies have adapted their structure (Galbraith, 2005) as well as their competences (Davies, 2001; Windahl, Andersson, Berggren, & Nehler, 2004). When developing integrated solutions, a company cannot provide all the components of a customer project on its own. Hence, it needs to cooperate with other companies that control complementary resources. The more critical these components are for the integrated solution, the more the solution provider will seek to guarantee its access to these resources. As a consequence, as certain authors indicate (e.g. Windahl et al., 2004) the management of stable relationships with complementary companies is a key competence. The management of external resources does, in fact, become crucial when the integrated solution is elaborated by a company of the systems integrator type. According to several authors (e.g. Davies, 2001; Windahl et al., 2004), management of external resources requires specific competences. Windahl et al. (2004) refer to them as partnering competences: “Partnering competence refers to the ability of solution providers to build alliances and partnerships with other suppliers and consultants in order to offer integrated solutions, and to develop continuous businesses in partnership with their customers” (Windahl et al., 2004, p. 220). The relationship management for key alliance partners can be (and increasingly is) implemented in a dedicated role. However, in the past, this emerging alliance manager role has not received much academic attention. Indeed, Ireland, Hitt, and Vaidyanath (2002) show that although one can observe that the literature on alliances is very abundant, “researchers have concentrated on […] explanations of alliance formation […], in contrast, relatively little research has analyzed ‘how’ alliances are formed” (Ireland et al., 2002, p. 414). For example, Lambe, Spekman, and Hunt (2002), when discussing a firm's alliance competence, do not take into consideration the individuals displaying such a competence. This is regrettable because with increasing numbers of alliances being established, the relevance of this role will augment rapidly. If researchers want to be able to understand the phenomenon of alliance management, they must start studying the mechanisms (roles, instruments etc.) put in place by companies. More generally it can be observed that there is a broad stream of literature discussing the design of marketing concepts (strategies, instruments etc.), their potential impact on objectives, as well as moderators and antecedents. Considerably less research has focused on marketing implementation. However, in practical application, many such concepts do not produce the impact posited by underlying theories or models. Often the expected effects are not attained because of inadequate execution (e.g. Rayport & Jaworski, 2004). Accordingly, there is increasing interest in the requirements of marketing implementation and particularly the activities (types, sequences, etc.) that need to be carried out (Bonoma, 1985). 3. An emerging managerial role overlooked in research References to alliance management for companies engaged in integrated solutions are frequent in managerial practice, particularly in the IT industry. On their internet sites, companies such as Oracle, SAP, IBM Global Services, SUN, Accenture, Hewlett Packard, and Microsoft provide information about the way they manage their relationships with their complementary partners in the integrated solutions business. In a similar vein, numerous job offers for alliance manager positions with detailed job descriptions can be found on internet job markets. On the other hand, certain authors (Blanchot, 2006; Pellegrin-Boucher, 2006) observe that the academic literature on alliance management is very limited. For example, Spekman, Forbes, Isabella, and MacAvoy (1998), affirm that “too little attention is given to the alliance manager as a central figure in determining the success/failure of an alliance” (p. 748). This situation may appear all the more astounding given that Dyer, Kale, and

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Singh (2001) show that inter-organizational alliances which generate the highest value are those that are managed through a dedicated strategic alliance role. According to Dyer et al. (2001): “an effective dedicated strategic alliance function performs four key roles: it improves knowledge management efforts, increases external visibility, provides internal coordination and eliminates both accountability problems and intervention problems” (p. 38). This also becomes clear from what Spekman et al. (1998) write: “Alliances require managers who can think and manage in ways that differ from what is required to manage a functional unit or business. Simply, the rules that apply to bureaucratic, hierarchical organizations no longer fit and we believe that new managerial models are appropriate (p. 765). As a consequence, additional academic research is needed to deepen our understanding of the alliance management role. This research should enable us, for example, to better compare this role with related roles such as key account management or key supplier management. It should also enable us to better describe similarities and differences between these roles which, in turn, will allow companies to optimize their relationship management structures. In the next section of this paper, we present such material. It has been collected in the context of the French IT sector and should allow describing the role of alliance managers. 4. Empirical study The empirical material we rely upon has been collected through personal interviews with alliance managers working in the French IT industry. The French IT can be described by the following characteristics (IDC, 2008): A fierce competition because the market has been stagnating for the several years; a high level of concentration with a few large leaders specialized by type of activity; the existence of hardware and software standards; the complexity of IT projects; high levels of investment into development on the supplier side and service providers favoring specialization in clearly defined areas; high costs of IT projects for customers. Three major types of actors are involved in developing customized solutions for IT end users. – Software editors: e.g. Oracle, SAP, People Soft, Microsoft. These companies often have their roots in North America, even if some large groups are French (Business Objects) or German (SAP). They develop software. Since these software do not entirely cover a given customer project's functional needs it is necessary to make adaptations which are realized by consulting and/or IT companies. – Hardware manufacturers: e.g. HP, IBM, SUN. They build the machines, the printers, the screens, the memory units on which the software and software will be installed. – IT Integrators and consultants: e.g. IBM Global Services, in France Cap Gemini, (IT System integrator, Consulting) who design the solutions by integrating the publishers' software and the manufacturers' hardware. These three types of actors jointly develop polygamous relationship constellations (Jones, Hesterly, Fladmoe-Lindquist, & Borgatti, 1998), under the direction of the alliance management role. Those managers are in charge of managing relationships with key partners. After having followed a systems selling logic, the IT sector has modified its business model by putting stronger emphasis on developing and selling integrated solutions. Given its characteristics, the French IT sector provides an interesting field in order to develop some insights into the role and work of alliance managers. This article is based upon data that has been collected in three steps: – In the first step, drawing upon information available from companies' websites, we conducted a comparison of the partnership offers that each actor (software editors, hardware manufacturers, integrators and consultants) proposes.

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– In the second step, a series of in-depth interviews has been conducted with alliance managers working for software editors (2 large, 2 medium-sized), IT service companies and consultancies (3 large, 2 small- and medium-sized) and hardware builders (3 large companies). Each interview lasted between 45 and 75 min. These interviews have allowed a better understanding of the mechanisms of the partnerships as well as studying the role in charge of managing the partnerships. Each interview was recorded and then summarized independently by three researchers. The results of this study served as the basis for the development of a questionnaire for the third step. – In the third step, 70 alliance managers were interviewed by telephone. The telephone approach was chosen because of the geographical dispersion of interview partners. The questionnaire explored the individual characteristics of the alliance managers, the way their role is organized, the tools they use, and the way how they manage their relationships with their alliance partners. In steps 2 and 3, the respondents came from the companies in the sector which are the most experienced in alliance management in their sector. The choice of respondent companies was made based upon an analysis of the practices described on their web site and on our own knowledge in the field of relationship management in the IT sector. For this reason, our findings are not necessarily representative for the whole of the IT sector, but they are for the most advanced companies in the field. 5. Findings Establishing a partnership relation between two large market actors, i.e. between leaders in the different activities of the IT sector, is a real investment. In order to make the alliance agreements work, a large number of companies in the IT sector have established a specialized role which is exclusively dealing with strategic and operational dimensions of alliance management. In the French context, several competing titles are used to denominate this role (cf. the French web site www.adalec.com which provides an overview of the definitions used by members of the Association Nationale des Directeurs de Partenariats Adalec, i.e. the National Association of Partnership Directors, or the one of the ASAP, i.e. the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, www.strategic-alliances.org). The role is located on either of two distinct hierarchical levels, one with a more strategic orientation in the form of the alliance director (or strategic alliance executive), the other with a stronger operational focus and labeled alliance manager. 5.1. The alliance director: managing the alliance's strategic dimension Several of the alliance director's core activities can be found in other roles inside a company; but, in the case of the alliance director, they are exclusively directed at the management of partnerships. These activities are: the development of the partnership strategy, certain marketing activities (for questions concerning the integrated solutions offered to the market), certain sales force management tasks (but limited to the aspects which are relevant in the context of alliances), and tasks related to business development. It is the unique combination of these complementary tasks that makes the alliance director role different from other roles inside a firm and justifies considering it as a distinct object of analysis. The variety of companies' reporting structures is another strong argument for conceptual and empirical research on it: almost 50% of alliance directors in our sample report to the CEO; 35% report to the sales director; 11% report to the marketing director. These different reporting relationships may reveal differences in how companies consider the role: either as a strategic role, or an operational role

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supporting the sales task, or as a primarily marketing oriented role responsible for designing coherent value propositions for customers. The alliance director's major responsibilities fall into three main categories. First, alliance directors select partners and determine which type of partnership to settle at the national and local levels. When international or global contracts are signed, they are prepared at the corporate level. The alliance director in a given country is in charge of adapting the global contract to the national context. Second, alliance directors are in charge of “partner portfolio” management. If these partners are large industrial groups who are leaders in their fields, managing the relationship with them is a joint task of the management board and the alliance director. Third, alliance directors manage the “alliance management team”. In our sample, an alliance management team has been put in place in 75% of all respondent companies. Where such a team exists, its average size is of 12 team members. In cases of companies where the team size is small, the alliance directors can also be responsible for a certain number of operational alliance management tasks. 5.2. The alliance manager: the operational management of the alliance Reporting to the alliance director, the alliance manager's tasks are more operational in nature, yet they have strategic importance because the activities of the alliance manager do influence the evolution of the relationship with the strategic alliance partner. We summarize the alliance manager's tasks around three dimensions: marketing, communication (external and internal) and sales support responsibilities. Marketing tasks consist in business development (creation of new offers and promotions with the partner; education and training of the partner…), in organizing co-marketing events in order to generate new business, in inventorying of joint references, and in creating marketing material. External communication tasks are concerned with the management of the ongoing relationship with the partner. Internal communication tasks, as for them, are much more linked to the alliance manager being an ambassador of the partner company inside his own company and a facilitator or problem solver. Sales support tasks consist in the writing of the partner business plan, in advising the sales force (e.g. selecting the most appropriate partner(s) in a given deal, in direct and indirect sales support, and in the control of the project progress together with the sales manager in order to make sure that the partners work according to contractual quality standards. More generally speaking, the alliance manager is involved in building up, maintaining and enhancing the relations with one or more partners which have been selected by the alliance director who defines the strategic framework. His activities focus on relationship management: on the one hand, outside the context of a specific business opportunity, with the objective of stabilizing the relationship and mobilizing the partner(s), on the other hand on each individual business opportunity by coordinating the partner(s) in the realization of an integrated solution. 6. Discussion: toward key relationship management The empirical findings lead to an interesting observation: The alliance management role shows strong similarities with two other management approaches which have been widely implemented in industrial companies over the past decade, i.e. key account management and key supplier management. Among these two concepts, key account management (e.g. Workman, Homburg, & Jensen, 2003) has clearly received more attention from academics. The central characteristics of key account management have been summarized by Pardo (2001, p.2): “To manage (key accounts) in a specific way means a different form of management than that usually used for customers. More specifically, this means the creation of a new mission (thus the creation of a new job, new practices, etc.) and its

integration into the existing structure. This mission involves coordinating supplier information and action in time and space in relation to a customer in its entirety”. The concept has been discussed from a conceptual point of view and several empirical studies have been published. Central contributions in the field are, for example, discussing different phases in the evolution of key account management systems (Pardo et al., 1995), a taxonomy of key account management organizations (Homburg et al., 2002), or the key account manager himself (Wilson & Millman, 2003). Other studies have examined differences between key account management and the management of business relationships with “ordinary” customers (Ivens & Pardo, 2007, 2008). More recently, practices labeled “key supplier management” have been observed and described as an element of certain companies' purchasing strategy (Corsten & Felde, 2005; Missirilian & Calvi, 2004; Wagner & Johnson, 2004). The Key Supplier Manager role consists of managing relationships with suppliers that the company has identified as being of strategic importance. Several multinational companies have formalized this role through specific job descriptions. Together with the new key alliance partner management role, these forms of “key relationship management” (key account management, key supplier management) have several characteristics in common: (1) Key relationship management concepts all focus on the management of relationships with external actors. A company puts in place such concepts because the access to or the combination with the resources held by these external actors are a condition to its mere existence. The fact that external actors are the partners has important implications for the way how the relationship can be managed, for example in terms of governance mechanisms. The company, and in particular the alliance manager, needs to design a system of governance mechanisms (such as contracts, relational norms, relationship-specific investments etc.) which ensures the continuity of the relationship and protects both parties against the threat of opportunism. (2) Key relationship management concepts take an interaction approach to the management of exchange with important external actors. This interaction perspective contrasts with the more discrete approach (and the focus on single transactions) in the case of relationships with actors which are not key to the firm. These other actors are typically managed in a more distant, sometimes almost anonymous manner. Certain instruments used (such as classical advertising, catalogues or standardized mailings) hardly allow going beyond one-way communication. In key relationship management, on the other hand, the company that puts in place this concept does so because it has taken an explicit decision to emphasize stable relationships with essentially the same actors rather than to identify new exchange partners every time a business opportunity arises. Two-way communication is typical for this approach. There is a sort of joint learning process that must be accomplished. Håkansson and Snehota (1995) explain that as resources combined in such relationships are heterogeneous, it is impossible to know the results of such combinations in advance. However, the process of learning enables the partners to better predict the outcome of future transactions. (3) Key relationship management focuses on the management of strategic relationships, not on a general set of relationships. It is based on the assumption that, from a managerial point of view, the relationships a firm's overall relationship portfolio is composed of may have different value (i.e. may be more or less important than others). This assumption is valid for vertical relationships with suppliers or customers as well as for horizontal relationships with alliance partners.

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The identification of such common underlying characteristics of three separate management concepts leads to the question whether the emergence of the concepts has joint roots. We will discuss this question in the next section. 7. Key relationships in a resource perspective How can we explain the emergence of such similar roles as key account, key customer and key alliance partner managers in companies? What theoretical underpinning do we have? We suggest that a resource perspective may provide an appropriate foundation to progress in the understanding of key relationships management. 7.1. A resource perspective Our objective in this section is not to discuss the different resource approaches developed in the literature, such as resource-advantage theory (Hunt & Morgan, 1995, 1996), resource dependence theory (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978), the relational view (Dyer & Singh, 1998), and the resource-based view of strategy (Barney, 1991; Srivastava, Fahey, & Christensen, 2001), in detail. Rather, we intend to show how these perspectives allow describing the issue of key relationship management in more precise terms. We do recognize that these approaches differ with respect to several aspects (whereas, for instance, RBV is focused on internal resources and core competencies to be protected from other actors, the relational approach is more concerned with relational resources and how they are negotiated, as well as adapted between firms). However, they share the view of a firm being a resource entity and being dependent on resources. They also assume a link between resources and company performance. Resources can be defined as “tangible and intangible entities available to firms that enable them to produce efficiently and/or effectively a market offering that has value for some market segments” (Hunt & Morgan, 1996, p.109). For Barney (1991), resources are what “enables the firm to conceive and implement strategies that improve efficiency and effectiveness” (p. 101) while Dyer and Singh (1998) hold that firms can increase profits by the combination of complementary resources. For Hunt and Morgan (1995, 1996) companies achieve superior financial performance if they occupy market place positions of competitive advantage which, in turn, is possible if they hold a comparative advantage in resources. Håkansson and Snehota (1995, p.113) summarize: “The resource dimension is – because of its impact on performance of the company – an important one”. Hence, a company's resource stock requires managerial attention. Recently, a firm's relationships with suppliers or customers have been identified as potentially important resources. This is for instance the case in the resource advantage theory which distinguishes seven types of resources (Hunt, 2000, p.185): 1) financial resources (e.g. cash reserves and access to financial markets); 2) physical resources (e.g. buildings and machinery); 3) legal resources (e.g. trademarks and licences); 4) human resources (e.g. individual employees with their skills and knowledge); 5) informational resources (the firm's stock of knowledge from e.g. technical research or customer intelligence); 6) relational resources (e.g. the firm's relationships with suppliers or customers); 7) organizational resources (e.g. controls, routines or formalized processes). The IMP Group perspective allows understanding the link between the resource concept and business relationships. “Companies make use of resources; a combination of technical, personal, financial and other resources is always needed in a business enterprise. No company has all the resources needed; some have to be acquired from others. At the same time the products and services of a company become resources for others — companies provide resources to others. For these reasons, the resource dimension of business relationships is an important one” (Håkansson & Snehota, 1995, p. 132). In the IMP

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perspective, the issue of “relational resource” is radically different because a resource “can be regarded as a relation rather than an element in itself” (Håkansson & Snehota, 1995, p. 132). Such a view makes it possible to hold that “as a consequence, in the relationship perspective resources are a result of activities as much as a condition that makes certain activities possible” (Håkansson & Snehota, 1995, p. 132). IMP authors thus talk about the double-faced nature of resources: resources always have a provision side (their features) and a use side (between provider and user). More generally, according to the IMP group, “the resource perspective is [an] appropriate angle from which one can look at a firm (Ford et al., 1998, p. 44). As such, we think that the resource perspective provides a good basis for the definition of what key relationships are and consequently a good framework to understand the phenomena of key relationship management and keyness. However, and this is the major underlying assumption of the resource dependence theory, one must admit that firms are generally not self-sufficient with respect to their critical resources (Pfeffer, 1992). Rather, they rely upon resources controlled by other market actors (Emerson, 1962). They are dependent. This dependence can vary in degree according (1) the resource's importance for the firm (2) the resource's availability to the firm (3) the resource's concentration. This dependence also constitutes a problem as it leads to uncertainty because resource flows may not be predicted precisely (Heide, 1994). From the IMP perspective, the dependence problem is only “a fact”, even if it is sometimes overlooked in the business marketing literature. What the IMP adds to this dependence problem is the problem of resource heterogeneity (and consequently a new problem of uncertainty). Indeed, if the resources are regarded as heterogeneous (in the meaning that their value depends on which other resources they are combined with) the results of their combinations are impossible to predict in advance. In a more detailed approach, Alchian and Demsetz (1972) add that, in such a case, the resource combinations have to be “tried out”. A learning process can then be at work: “the more that is known about how the different dimensions of resources can be used together, the more effectively they can be combined”. (Håkansson & Snehota, 1995, p. 135). In summary, all this stresses the necessity for a firm to analyze its portfolio of required resources in a dependence perspective. In this process, the firm needs, first to assess which external actors control critical resources and, second, to determine which kind of relationships can allow the “best” combinations of resources. However, there is no ex ante guarantee of the relevance of the decisions taken. 7.2. Relationship keyness The resource perspective allows understanding that certain relationships with external actors are more important than others to a company. Drawing upon the terminology of customer and supplier management, certain relationships are key whereas others are not. What we can refer to as the keyness of a relationship relates both to: 1) the importance of the potential of the complementary resources the relationship allows to combine (with a customer, supplier or partner) not even for the company to reach its competitive advantage but for its very development, and 2) to the importance of the specific adjustments the supplier makes (through the creation of new roles, new offers, new tools, new practices etc.). However, our objective with this paper is not so much to show that some relationships are more important – because they allow to access and develop new resources – than others. This is not a novel observation. Rather, our argument is that the empirical evidence reported in this paper as well as in other streams of literature that specific roles have emerged in different functional areas of companies in order to deal with differences in the strategic importance of external actors and that there is a common origin of these roles. Not only some relationships are more important than others, but companies have realized this and consequently

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organized themselves (through the creation of new organizational roles) to deal with such situations. Whatever the label for these organizational roles, the reason why they exist is identical and much of the activities of the people fulfilling these roles are similar. When dealing with relationship keyness, companies are actually facing a double challenge. They have to identify which resources they can combine and how they are going to combine them. We know that relationships are the “vehicles” of resource combination; but what kind of relationships? We also know that a relationship per se is a potential resource. But, because of resource heterogeneity the value of the resource called “relationship” is impossible to predict; it depends on which combination of other resources it is the vehicle of. The output of the relationship (a resource combination) influences the relationship itself just as if the future was already comprised in the present. In the case of key relationship management there is a distinction to be made between key relationship management as a role and key relationship management as the process of identifying resources within organizations that make them ‘key’ to the creation of successful offerings — and worth investing it from a key relationship management perspective. A company identifies resources to combine with in another company. Because of resource heterogeneity, companies have to organize specifically to manage the resource combination through the relationship in the most efficient way. In the case of key relationships, part of this organization relies on the creation of a specific organizational role — whether it is a key account manager, a key supplier manager or an alliance partner manager. Such a role gives, in turn, birth to new resources such as the one described in our findings: new offerings, new development, and new opportunities which contribute to enhancing the value of the relationship. Hence, key relationship management as a process of identification of key relationships and key relationship management as the management of such relationships are dialectically linked. The concept of keyness encompasses both of these dimensions of key relationships management. If keyness is defined in this way, key relationship management becomes a real challenge for managers. The managerial task at stake is of a major importance because nothing is definitely set, everything is emerging: the relationship justifies the role (the key relationship management role) which modifies the relationship which, in turn, justifies the role. In this context it appears that key relationship management cannot be defined referring to the characteristics of the customer, supplier or partner in alliance but only with respect to the relationship between a company and its customers, suppliers or partners in alliance. 8. Directions for future research If one takes the vantage point of the focal organization, a major task is the management of relationships with other organizations. According to Håkansson and Snehota (1995) a company's performance depends upon its relationships with a limited number of partners. Hence, some relationships are strategic and will be managed in a specific way, i.e. with a high degree of coordination. Whether it is to manage strategic relationships with the suppliers' market or with the customers' market, specialized roles have emerged, in the middle of the 1990s, within companies. In this article we have described the emergence of another particular role, the alliance management role. The observation of an institutionalization of comparable activities in comparable roles appeared as very engaging and led us to the more general conclusion that companies understand keyness as a major challenge. This evolution calls for more detailed research on the issue. We see potential for future research in several areas. First, the concept which represents the starting point of this article, i.e. alliance management, needs to be studied in more detail. Although our descriptive research

has allowed us to develop a first understanding of this emerging role, the limitations of our research leave room for additional studies. For example, our data are limited to one industry sector in only one country. Hence, future research should attempt to broaden our knowledge by collecting cross-sectional data. Moreover, our sample is not representative because large companies are overrepresented. Again, future studies should attempt to collect a more balanced set of data. Finally, in our study we have not analyzed contingency factors which may allow the explanation of specific configurations of alliance management. Nor have we studied antecedents or outcome effects of alliance management programs. We believe that much more qualitative and quantitative research is necessary in order to obtain a comprehensive picture of the alliance management role. Beyond the alliance management concept, we believe that much research is still required to better understand the commonalities and potential differences among the different key relationship management concepts. Although extant research on the individual topics of key account, key supplier, and key alliance partner management is far from being at a point where no additional value could be created from additional studies, our empirical results as well as our conceptual discussion lead to the conclusion that keyness is a common topic across the three fields. However, more detailed studies will be required to define precisely the common grounds as well as the idiosyncratic facets of key relationship management approaches. Hence, future research should attempt to conceptualize the construct of relationship keyness more precisely than we have done here. The idea that a company's global relationship portfolio is comprised of sub-portfolios (the customer portfolio, the supplier portfolio, the alliance partner portfolio, but potentially also portfolios of other relationships not yet included in our perspective) has implications for management approaches. Identifying all relevant elements of the overall relationship portfolio and understanding the interrelationships between single aspects represents one key challenge. It may require new ways of managing relationships, particularly given competitive situations in which one firm may represent a competitor, an alliance partner and a customer or supplier at the same time. Classically, different people inside the company would have been in charge of managing the competitor, the alliance partner, and the customer. In the future, firms may need to implement one single role which is responsible for the coordination of multifaceted relationships with one other firm that has several roles. A particular issue which may prove to be of high relevance in such contexts may be the creation of appropriate governance structures. There is a broad stream of research on the implementation of governance mechanisms (such as contracts, norms or trust) in relationships. However, little is known how these mechanisms are used in multifaceted relationships in which the same company may act as a key customer and as another type of key actor at the same time but in different contexts. Again, keyness may be a useful concept. Finally, we believe that a particularly important field for future research lies in the link between these strategic challenges and companies' human resource management. The actors in key relationship management most likely need to be highly competent, mentally flexible and very adaptive people. They must combine strategic capabilities and more operative skills. Finding such employees may prove to be a tremendously difficult task. What types of profiles fit in well with the organizational role of the key relationship manager? And where to find these people? What is their impact on the company as a whole? And do other entities inside the company allow them to succeed? In summary, we believe that the area of key relationship management and the concept of keyness offer strong potential for future research. Both have a direct link with companies' business strategy as well as business performance. The challenge is for academics to better understand companies' practices in this field in order to not only describe existing management practices but to be able to advise

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