Partnering with the Frenemy: A Framework for Managing Business Relationships, Minimizing Conflict, and Achieving Partnership Success

Partnering with the Frenemy: A Framework for Managing Business Relationships, Minimizing Conflict, and Achieving Partnership Success

by Sandy Jap
Released November 2015
Publisher(s): Pearson
ISBN: 9780134386928

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Book description

Why do crucial business partnerships and alliances fail so often and how can you keep it from happening to you? Partnering with the Frenemy answers these questions, helping you anticipate, prevent, and solve the problems that lead close business relationships to implode.

Drawing on cutting-edge research, Sandy Jap illuminates the widespread “frenemy” phenomenon in organizational partnerships, where partners who start as non-competitive “friends” become “enemies” over time.

She identifies key economical and structural causes of “frenemization,” in which success creates imbalances in power dynamics, leading partners to generate resentment, contempt, and often direct competition. She also illuminates crucial social causes for partnership failure, where seemingly innocuous acts of interpersonal opportunism and “sins of omission” gradually poison collaboration.


To support her insights, she offers numerous case studies, both ongoing and historical, including Samsung/Google, Martha Stewart/Macy’s, Oracle/Sun Microsystems, Best Buy/Apple, Calvin Klein/Warnaco, and Nike/Footlocker. Most important, she offers specific recommendations for avoiding problems, revitalizing weakening partnerships, and recognizing when a partnership can’t be saved.


IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT CONTRACTS AND MONEY
Understand how to better manage emotions, suspicions, and expectations from Day 1


WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM OTHERS’ FAILING PARTNERSHIPS
Anticipate, prevent, and mitigate the core causes of business relationship failure


RECOGNIZE PARTNERING “OPPORTUNISM” BEFORE IT DESTROYS COLLABORATION
Fix partnering problems while you still can


IT’S NOT A MARRIAGE: HOW TO BECOME COMFORTABLE SAYING GOODBYE
Know when to end a partnership, and how to part as “friends”

Table of contents

  1. About This E-Book
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Praise for Partnering with the Frenemy
  5. Dedication Page
  6. Contents
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. About the Author
  9. Preface
  10. Introduction
    1. Is Partnership Death Preventable?
    2. Frenemies Are the Closet Skeletons of Relationships
    3. A Framework for Frenemization
    4. Endnotes
  11. 1. When the Good Goes Bad
    1. Enter the Frenemy
    2. Why Do Partnerships Frenemize?
    3. How Relationships Could Have Changed the Path of the iPhone
      1. Partnering in the Cloud Era
      2. Partner Ecosystems for Apps
    4. We Are Hard-Wired for Relationships
    5. Partnering Relationships—Jekyll and Hyde?
    6. Breakups Are Not Just Courtships in Reverse
    7. Endnotes
  12. 2. The Physics of Relationship Dynamics
    1. Personal Versus Organizational Relationships
    2. Models of Relationship Development
      1. A Linear, Lifecycle View
      2. A Cyclical View
    3. A Test of Relationship World Views
    4. Does How You Get There Matter?
    5. The Curse of Regression: HP and Oracle
    6. What Happens between Commitment and Dissolution?
      1. The Dark Side
      2. It Only Takes One
      3. The Death Spiral
    7. Endnotes
  13. 3. The Delicate Balance
    1. Power and Dependence
    2. The Holdup Problem and Its Solution
    3. Frenemization Occurs When Power Is Imbalanced
    4. The Need for Balance
    5. Walmart, a Balance Theory Master
    6. Partners Will Rebalance, and It Pays
    7. A Redux on Oracle and HP
    8. Do Relationships Lead Partners to Make Poor Economic Choices?
    9. How Firms Balance the Economic and Noneconomic Aspects with Partners
    10. Economics Are Not Lost in New Contract Decisions
    11. Relationships Create an Uneven Playing Field
    12. Relationships Also Help in the Margins
    13. Don’t Forget the Competition
    14. And Don’t Forget to Share
    15. Equity Versus Equality Sharing
    16. And Now, an Exception to the Sharing Rules
    17. Take a Page from the JV Playbook
      1. When the JV Is Considerably Different from the Owners
      2. Mature Product Industries
      3. The Case of Intense Competition
      4. Data Rich Environments
      5. When the Destination Is Known
    18. Endnotes
  14. 4. How Our Behavior Gets in the Way
    1. Lost in Translation
    2. Rapport and Its Role in Human Interactions
    3. Rapport in Negotiations
    4. The New Narrative, with a Life of Its Own
    5. Avoiding the Rapport Trap
    6. Reducing the Dark Side of Rapport
    7. The Problem with Tolerance
    8. Partnering and Opportunism
    9. Petty Opportunism and Its Consequences
    10. Why Petty Opportunism Persists
    11. The Hidden Costs of Petty Opportunism
    12. The Petty Poisons
    13. The Stubborn Effects of Petty Opportunism
    14. What to Do about Petty Opportunism
    15. Why Do We Even Have a Petty Opportunism Problem?
    16. What This Means for the Future
    17. Endnotes
  15. 5. How We Justify Our Bad Behavior
    1. Low Stakes Opportunism
    2. What Low Stakes Opportunism Looks Like
    3. Moral Malleability in Close Relationships
    4. The Shadow of the Future Assists the Rationalizing
    5. Perceptions Create Reality
    6. Exceeding Expectations—Is It Enough?
    7. Falling Short Does Damage
    8. Exceeding Expectations Is Unremarkable
    9. Can Exceeding Expectations Be Bad?
    10. Too Much of a Good Thing Really Is a Bad Thing
    11. Really Good Still Beats Really Bad
      1. The Negative Discrepancy Case
      2. The Postive Discrepancy Case
    12. How Incoherence Undermines
    13. Brokenness Cannot Be Fixed Overnight
    14. Why More Relationships Fail Than Succeed
    15. Endnotes
  16. 6. Why Trust Is Not Enough
    1. The Power of Trust
    2. How Trust Is Built
    3. Online Procurement Auctions and Trust
    4. Where Did Trust Go?
    5. Perception Trumps Reality
    6. If Not Trust, Then What?
    7. The Trust Versus Goals Versus Investments Matchup
    8. The Seeds of Opportunism Are Fertilized by Distrust
    9. And the Winner Is...
    10. The Problem with Trust
    11. It’s the Mix of Mechanisms That Matters
    12. How Much Is Too Much? Too Little?
    13. Don’t Forget the Dynamics
    14. Trust Gets No Respect
    15. Power, Trust and the Lifecycle
    16. It’s about Perception, Not Reality
    17. The Power of Illusion
    18. The Fluidity of Trust
    19. Trust Is Linked to Everything Else
    20. Endnotes
  17. 7. Solutions to Frenemization
    1. Better To Say Good-bye Sooner, Rather Than Later
    2. Losing Friends without Influencing People
    3. Adios Amigos!
    4. Why Mutual Investments Matter
    5. Two (Or Three) Safeguards Are Better Than One
    6. Safeguarding Your Partnership over the Lifecycle
    7. Executing the Exploration Phase
    8. What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You
    9. Try to Visualize a Joint Future—The Rule of Three
    10. Fortifying the Buildup Phase
    11. The Contract as King
    12. Start with Who Does What
    13. Cross the Cultural Chasm: The Role of Relationship Maps
    14. Uncoupling and Dismantling
    15. Navigating the End
    16. Learn from the End
    17. Endnotes
  18. 8. Practices for the Long Run
    1. Learn from Others, with No Judgments
    2. Develop a One-Up, One-Down Network
    3. The Three C’s: Candor, Concern, and Complacency
    4. Vaccinations for Complacency
    5. Beware Becoming Insular
    6. Raze the Routine
    7. Keep Calm and Carry On
    8. Don’t Forget Your Sandbox Manners
    9. How Much Friendship Do You Really Need?
    10. The End Is Here
    11. Endnotes
  19. Bibliography
  20. Index

Product information

  • Title: Partnering with the Frenemy: A Framework for Managing Business Relationships, Minimizing Conflict, and Achieving Partnership Success
  • Author(s): Sandy Jap
  • Release date: November 2015
  • Publisher(s): Pearson
  • ISBN: 9780134386928