Business-to-Business Interaction

Inter-organizational relationships involve active interfacing between organizations that are pursuing different goals while being dependent on each other at the same time. Hence, Business-to-Business (B2B) interaction can be characterized by a high degree of complexity, involving issues and concepts stemming from Purchasing, Marketing, Key Account Management or Negotiation. This article shows how a business case may be a pertinent tool to teach B2B interaction in such complexity. Based on his experience in designing a case study for a B2B Marketing course at ESSEC Business School, the author first discusses the institutional and historical context of this ‘real-life’ experience, and describes the case scenario and issues. The second part of the paper shows to what extent the management of B2B interaction, as a professional field, is a good candidate for case teaching as a result of its complexity. Through the example introduced at the outset, the author shows how a case-based B2B negotiation simulation actually addresses the training challenge by ensuring ‘high impact learning’ as defined by IMD (IMD, 2005). In the third and last part, the paper discusses how ensuring real learning efficiency also highly depends on how the case-teaching process is driven, especially through case format and structure, preparation and teaching scenario, facilitation method and time management. The conclusion underlines the fact that the returns in training efficiency largely justify the intense work of case design in this context, provided that the case teaching process is well managed.