Value Co-Creation in Industrial Buyer-Seller Partnerships ... - Doria

the partnership in this context meant, and therefore needed time to accept the idea of thepartnership and adopt different strategies with different suppliers.6.5 On the verge of cooperation agreement II in 2003-04“ So they initially started with this contract five years ago (1999) and it has been onehell of a mess, we have not come anywhere in five years. It is as bad as it was…(Interview: Buyer15)When the continuation of the cooperation agreement became a topic for discussion in thefall of 2003, the situation and motivation for continuing the partnership was different fromthat in the late 1990’ s. During the years of the first cooperation agreement the Buyer hadmanaged to cut operational costs considerably, the Seller had inadequately communicatedtechnical problems, the Seller spare parts were perceived to be expensive, which led to theBuyer breaking their part of the agreement regarding spare parts, and there was a general airof lack of trust and respect between the parties. The Buyer felt that the Seller did notunderstand its business and that the cultures of the two companies were so different that itwas hard to find common ground to stand on. The Seller also lost the big NN Class deal to acompetitor in 2000. At the time the outlook for the continuation of the cooperationagreement and the pursuing of the partnership did not look promising.” Regarding technical information and development, the partnership is lagging behindbig time, and there are several reasons for it. However, I believe that the biggestreason is that the cultures between the Seller and the Buyer are so different, so faraway from each other. I do not know the Seller culture, but I have seen from theinstances when we have experienced trouble, they have not been willing to discuss theproblems, they have acted as if the problems did not exist. They have not been willingto discuss and come up with solutions... and they have not been willing to give... If wecan not manage to change this culture, then there is no use talking about apartnership.” (Interview: Buyer 8)In the fall of 2003, when there was approximately 6 months left of the first five yearagreement, there were a number of critical issues on the table. This was the time when thetwo organizations were to start discussing whether they would carry on the work within theframes of a partnership. The fall of 2003 is also when this research project on value cocreationwas started and marks the beginning of the gathering of the empirical material forthe study.Mr BR9, who had been the proponent of the partnership from the beginning, wascritical of the continuation of the cooperation agreement at the time.116