Dialogue and its role in the development of relationship specific knowledge

TLDR

Dialogue is often spontaneous and unruly yet driven by a serious intent to achieve mutual understanding. The article explores dialogue as an interactive learning process and introduces relationship‑specific knowledge to explain how trust develops between business counterparts through iterative learning cycles. The authors model trust development between business counterparts by introducing relationship‑specific knowledge that captures iterative dialogue cycles. Dialogue generates new business knowledge, yielding creative solutions to marketing and supply problems and enhancing mutual value in buyer‑supplier exchanges.

Abstract

In this article, dialogue is explored as an interactive process of learning together. This process is often spontaneous and unruly but bounded by a serious intent to reach mutual understanding. Also, the concept of relationship specific knowledge is introduced to explain how trust between business counterparts develops through dialogue in iterative cycles of learning. Dialogue also brings opportunities for generating new business knowledge, within the firm and between firms, in the form of creative solutions to marketing and supply problems. In this way, mutual value in buyer‐supplier exchanges is enhanced.