‘All firms are snakes’. So says Paul D. Cousins in A conceptual model for managing long-term inter-organisational relationships, published in 2002. ‘They are maximisers and satisfiers concerned with their own survival and self-interest’. I find that a rather harsh statement. How is collaboration and relationship management possible in such an environment? The issue that needs to be addressed  is perhaps not so much about building trust, but about optimally managing the self-interest of the involved parties. And in the end, competition is maybe better than collaboration after all…

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