Sharing sensitive information in supply relationships: The flaws in one-way open-book negotiation and the need for transparency

Lamming, Richard, Caldwell, Nigel, Phillips, Wendy and Harrison, Deborah (2005) Sharing sensitive information in supply relationships: The flaws in one-way open-book negotiation and the need for transparency. European Management Journal, 23 (5), 554-563. (doi:10.1016/j.emj.2005.09.010).

Abstract

One of the key issues in managing inter-organisational relationships is the need for exchanging sensitive information and knowledge between customer and supplier. Attempts to conduct this process in practice appear to have taken customer dominance as their basis; the negotiation techniques that have developed as a result appear clumsy and flawed.
This paper explores customers’ requirement for their suppliers to ‘open their books’ and reveal sensitive and secret information. The subsequent tactical ploys and responses commonly employed are discussed and a potential solution to the problem is proposed – the concept of jointly managed transparency at the supply interface.

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