The effect of relational governance on business partnership performance: a Nedap AVI case

The aim of this research is to assess the effect of relational governance on business partnership performance. A conceptual model with three associated hypotheses is developed and tested. Business development managers of Nedap AVI (interviews), a technology company from the Netherlands and their global network of business partners (survey, N=41) provided data for the empirical analysis. The results show that establishing and building trust & commitment are of major importance in order to develop effective and successful business relationships with business partners. Relational governance, a construct existing of the dimensions; joint planning; joint problem solving; trust & commitment has a significant positive effect on one of the two performance indicators used in this study, perceived satisfaction (hypothesis 1). There is no evidence being found regarding a positive effect of relational governance on the other performance indicator that is adopted, sales growth rate (hypothesis 2). This research also investigated whether there is a mediating effect of perceived satisfaction on the sales growth rate. This assumption (hypothesis 3) cannot be confirmed based on the results of this study.