Focusing on Relationship Dimensions to Improve the Quality of Chinese–Western Business-to-Business Exchanges

Abstract

The article reports on a number of items that have been assembled to compare business relationships involving Western and Chinese counterparts. Whilst the extant buyer–seller and channel management literature has tended to focus on Western or Chinese relational forms in isolation, an attempt has been made here to broaden our understanding by providing a comparative overview of these two perspectives. By focusing on several key items that appear significant, yet may also imply different forms of relevance in a Chinese and Western context, several managerial implications are extracted, and these are considered useful in the quest to help firms improve the quality associated with managing and developing such hybrid international relations.