The John Madejski Centre for Reputation
Outline of Our Research
Business relationships and corporate success
The latest ideas in strategic management stress that strong long-term business relationships create competitive advantage, enhance goodwill, and grow the market value of a company.
We have developed a model and a single questionnaire, which, for the first time, evaluates the strength of business relationships with customers, suppliers, employees and investors and communities. The results of the questionnaire can be used to develop action plans to strengthen these key relationships.
The model (in simplified form) is in three parts:
- Business Behaviour and Reputation. A business' reputation is built upon the relationships it has with its stakeholders. This part of the questionnaire allows a business to understand how it is regarded by its stakeholders in terms of important relationship issues. These include the various kinds of benefits (tangible and intangible) offered to stakeholders and how stakeholders judge the past behaviour of the business.
- Stakeholder Trust and Commitment is at the core of good relationships. These attitudes incorporate views of a business's reliability and dependability and whether these are likely to endure in an uncertain world. They also indicate whether stakeholders are willing to put effort into maintaining their relationships with the organisation.
- Long-Term Supportive Relationships provide the basis for increasing the resources available to the organisation, extending the scope of exchanges with stakeholders, generating collaborative and innovative opportunities, seeking constructive solutions to problems and resolving potential conflicts.
A further section of the questionnaire enables the above elements to be linked to factors such as the length of the relationship, the type of contact and the circumstances of the stakeholder.
The research process
The research starts with a series of focus groups with a small number of an organisations' stakeholders. This enables the questionnaire to be tailored to any organisations'circumstances.
The research team will work with each company collaborating in the research, to plan the distribution of questionnaires and to ensure the minimum disruption to the day-to-day running of the business.
It should take each respondent no more than 20 minutes to complete the questionnaire. Completed questionnaires will be returned to the research team for analysis.
Collaborating organisations will be provided with a report covering the findings of the research, the implications of which can then be discussed in a meeting with the research team.
Strict confidentiality will be maintained concerning the results from any particular organisation. The name of the business, and any other identifiable information will not be used without written consent.
Having measured all these elements of key business relationships, it should be possible to develop action plans designed to strengthen those aspects which are weakest, in order to enhance the business's competitive advantage, know-how and reputation in the long-term.