This paper investigates how firms can be the most effective at relationship management to create initial and long-term, recurrent project value. The paper uses qualitative data from in-depth interviews to analyse the project experience of a multinational firm with its strategic partners to better understand inter-firm relationship success. The analysis shows that complementary resources and knowledge sharing are necessary, but not sufficient for value creation from inter-firm relationships, and competitive alignment is introduced to differentiate between the successful and less successful relationships. The research shows the importance of defining competitive alignment during the negotiation process and sustaining it throughout each relationship cycle in order to create long-term value. In addition, practitioners can learn how to exploit formal control mechanisms to incentivize competitive alignment with their external partners.

本文研究了企业如何最有效地进行关系管理，以创造初始和长期、经常性的项目价值。本文使用深度访谈的定性数据来分析跨国公司与其战略合作伙伴的项目经验，以更好地了解公司间关系的成功。分析表明，资源互补和知识共享是必要的，但不足以从公司间关系中创造价值，因此引入竞争联盟来区分成功和不太成功的关系。研究表明，在谈判过程中定义竞争联盟并在每个关系周期中维持竞争联盟以创造长期价值的重要性。此外，