Relationship management for recurrent project value creation

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.