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Paper info: Relationship-focused or deal-focused? The changing framework of building business relationships in Poland

Title


Relationship-focused or deal-focused? The changing framework of building business relationships in Poland

Authors


Aldona Gli?ska-Newe?,
Iwona Escher
Nicolaus Copernicus University
Poland
Iwona Escher , Pawe? Brzustewicz, Dawid Szostek and Joanna Petrykowska

Place of Publication


The paper was published at the 32nd IMP-conference in Poznan, Poland in 2016.

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Abstract


Polish culture is moderately relationship-focused which may be considered as a postcommunism heritage. That means that business relationships contain a personal component and relationship partners make big efforts to build and maintain them. However, according to external researchers and observers this pattern is likely to change together with a new generation of businesspeople approaching the market. Thus, the aim of this paper is to identify the contemporary model of building and maintaining business relationships in Poland and compare it with the one that dominated in the early 1990s. We have conducted the qualitative research in the form of 16 individual semi-structured interviews in four companies operating in Poland, representing construction, chemical, alcoholic beverages and automotive industries. Respondents have been selected according to their experience in maintaining organisation external relationships in the 1990s and at present. A content analysis of the interview results, with the use of MAXQDA software, allows us to grasp both the nature and changes of business relationship notions as well as of the relationship actors’ behaviours in the process of making interorganisational relationships in Polish business. The results prove the changing nature and process of business relationships in Poland towards a more transactional approach, however the change is not significant. The paper contributes to theory development in the field of relationship marketing and cross-cultural management and also through the proposition of a research framework for a business relationship approach analysis.