Inter-organizational interaction in Intra-Asia business: a four-country study

The preliminary research presented here is based upon the fundamental belief portrayed within the ‘interactions paradigm’; that existing interorganizational relationships must be maintained and strengthened to protect against growing competitive pressures. Equally important, to survive in the increasingly international competitive environment of the next decade Asia Pacific suppliers must aggressively seek to establish new relationships in intra-Asian, trans-Pacific and global markets. Based upon an empirically tested development of this approach, this article provides a picture of the quality of the international marketing and purchasing interactions in two regions of Asia Pacific. That is, between Hong Kong Chinese managers (buyers) and managers (sellers) from two pairs of East and Southeast Asian countries. The first pair are ethnic Chinese sellers from the coastal group of the Southeast Asian Overseas Chinese diaspora in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The second pair are East Asians from South Korea and Japan. The results are based upon a self-completing questionnaire survey of managers working in Hong Kong. A number of relationship dimensions as identified by Ford (1990b) provide the underpinnings for this research, which is given a primarily qualitative interpretation. The focus is upon maintaining and strengthening the customer base to protect it against growing competitive pressures and understanding how customers buy (Turnbull, 1994). In a series of footnotes the article also touches lightly upon the implications of fluctuations of Southeast Asian currencies of late-1997 for organizational relationship strategies.