Collaboration in buyer-supplier relationships

This thesis focuses on collaboration in buyer-supplier relationships, with a specific interest for long-term, collaborative relationships that are part of a key supplier program. An extensive literature review of buyer-supplier collaboration is presented, before detailing the longitudinal, dyadic, multiple level, and multiple actor research design. The largest part of the empirical data is formed by 157 interview transcripts. The qualitative analysis of these transcripts is structured by using different types of data displays. The empirical chapters provide three different ways of looking at the development of collaborative buyer-supplier relationships. Furthermore, a dynamic model of relationship evolution has been developed in this thesis. This dynamic perspective advances on earlier work in the field of relationship development and provides insight in the mechanisms underlying the evolution of collaborative relationships.