Hegemony in asymmetric customer-supplier relationships

This paper explores the concept of hegemony to understand how power relates to hegemony and the potential influence of hegemony on business relationships. The nature of hegemony, its connections to the power literature and its impacts on customer-supplier relationships can expose the mechanisms that contribute to sustaining inequality in asymmetric relationships. We bridge the concept of hegemony (with roots predominantly from the international relations and sociology fields) to the relationship and interaction literature showing the derivations, distinctions and potential evolutions of literature combining power and hegemony in customer-supplier relationships. A conceptual framework, 'the hegemonic triangle', identifies a hegemonic approach to customer-supplier relationships involving dominance, mastery and authority. Hegemonic relationships may evolve from imbalanced power of a customer over a supplier through determinedly and unilaterally imposing these three facets to exert influence over a supplier. The hegemonic triangle is situated at three boundary levels of influence; the contract, the market, and ideology. Hegemony is positioned at the meta level and represents a spatial domain impacting mental models of actors who legitimize practices and ideas. The paper presents an agenda for research linking hegemony and power to guide future conceptual and empirical developments in B2B relationship and interaction studies.