Managing Relational Bond: An Integrative Approach

Managing voluntary cooperative relationships is growing in strategic importance. While some scholars emphasize the importance of fostering interpersonal ties and establishing a long-term perspective, others focus on managing the pattern of payoff to enhance a relationship. We offer a contingency framework that integrates these two perspectives of relationship building. The central thesis is that the effectiveness of payoff management hinges systematically on the context of a relationship jointly comprising interpersonal and intertemporal dynamics. The framework can be useful in enhancing the decision-making capabilities of managers who either proactively improve cooperation or reactively mitigate unfavorable payoff changes.