Evaluating a Model of Industrial Relationship Performance: A Comparison of European and Chinese Results Using the IMP Data Base

Firms are not isolated economic actors. Their performance depends on more than their own efforts, capabilities and resources. It is also a function of the efforts and resources of others and on the relations a firm has both directly and indirectly with these counterparts. Based on these premises, we examine whether a model of international business relationship performance developed in a Western business context generalises to a Chinese context. Contrary to expectations, given the differences in business cultures, our results suggest that the same model applies in Swedish and Chinese samples of international supplier-customer relations. The exception is that connected business relations have a significant indirect effect on performance in the Chinese but not the Swedish sample. Differences also exist in the way some items used to measure two relationship dimensions operate in the two contexts. Management implications of our results and future research directions are discussed.