Paper info

Managing Relationships in Showery Weather: The Role ofUmbrella Agreements

David Ford and Stefanos Mouzas

The paper was published at the 21st IMP-conference in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 2005.

Network approaches have expanded our view of markets as interconnected networks ofexchange relationships, in which companies interact. This paper deals with an increasinglyimportant aspect of interaction. This is the role of umbrella agreements in businessrelationships. These umbrella agreements can be understood as attempts to mirror the realityof business interaction by providing a framework of principles within which exchanges mayhappen. This paper builds on ideas on interaction to examine a number of real-world cases ofumbrella agreements. It draws conclusions on the role of these agreements for managers andmore widely on the nature of interaction itself.