Interorganisational buyer-seller relationships have been primarily studied from the perspective of relationship development and the benefits accrued from relationships. There is a lack of research concerning problems with relationships and relationship dissolution. The dissolution of a business relationship can be either desirable, freeing badly deployed resources, as indicated by the customer portfolio approach, or harmful, involving costly legal disputes and the loss of company reputation. By employing a theory-driven case study approach we examine the exit strategies available for the disengager in dissolving interorganisational buyer-seller relationships. We show that the quality of dissolution is affected by the disengager's choice of exit strategy. Managerial suggestions are provided for achieving``beautiful exits'', i.e. such communication strategies which minimise damages of the dissolution to the disengager, the other party, and the connected business network.

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Owing to the strong position of traditional marketing communications (especially advertising) research and consumer marketing related theories in the general field of marketing, the prevailing concepts of communication can be labeled as``mass communicative'' in current marketing discourse as a whole. However, along with the rise of various``relational approaches'' in marketing, the focus of marketing research seems to shift from products and firms as a central unit of analysis to people, organizations and the social processes that bind actors together in ongoing relationships. In these interactive relationship/ network contexts, the nature of communication is hardly mass communicative. This article aims at presenting a theoretical framework on the role of communication in business relationships and networks. The interaction/network approach to marketing means moving from the current perspective of marketing's mass-communicative effects and consequent communicative behaviors of organizations to thè`l ower level'' of interpersonal communication processes occurring within business relationships and networks.

Despite the fact that commercial sponsorship nowadays is a common phenomenon with salient effects on different aspects of developed societies at large (e.g. sports, the arts, the public sector, the media), academic research interest in this closely marketing‐related field seems to be rather low. Although there have been significant changes in marketing thinking during the 1990s, current research on sponsorship seems to be “stuck” in the more traditional, marketing‐mix management – and mass communicative effects‐based discourse. This paper aims at presenting a theoretical overview of how current sponsorship research could be developed further by applying the basic ideas and concepts provided by the interaction/network approach to the study of sponsorship‐related phenomena. Adopting an interaction/network perspective means that, instead of measuring the mass‐communicative effects on various audiences, the focus is on understanding the development of sponsorship relationships and networks, as well as on interpersonal communication processes going on between the sponsorship parties.

Modern business schools exist in a complex world of rankings, ratings, and credentials. Some argue that in increasingly competitive global higher education markets, signaling status and quality has actually become more important than having them (Gioia & Corley, 2002;Trank & Rynes, 2003). For many contemporary business schools, international accreditations have become key means and first steps in pursuing legitimacy and global status. In this essay, we elaborate in detail on a business school's international accreditation process, including its motivations and outcomes. We conclude that while accreditation processes are, at best, fruitful quality improvement exercises, the inherent motivations stemming from the urge for organizational legitimacy, status, and reputation should not be overlooked by either the accrediting agencies or business schools themselves. Ironically, while accreditation agencies (AACSB and EQUIS are those focused on here) rarely explicitly encourage competition, their exclusivity seems to generate it between schools that aspire to belong to "the club." For schools that gain access to the process, this means that on the flip side of the happy and collaborative jump in quality there is a much more serious demarcation and revealing redefinition of the accredited entity's future supporters, collaborators, partners, and competitors.

Modern business schools exist in a complex world of rankings, ratings, and credentials. Some argue that in increasingly competitive global higher education markets, signaling status and quality has actually become more important than having them (Gioia & Corley, 2002; Trank & Rynes, 2003). For many contemporary business schools, international accreditations have become key means and first steps in pursuing legitimacy and global status. In this essay, we elaborate in detail on a business school's international accreditation process, including its motivations and outcomes. We conclude that while accreditation processes are, at best, fruitful quality improvement exercises, the inherent motivations stemming from the urge for organizational legitimacy, status, and reputation should not be overlooked by either the accrediting agencies or business schools themselves. Ironically, while accreditation agencies (AACSB and EQUIS are those focused on here) rarely explicitly encourage competition, their exclusivity seems to generate it between schools that aspire to belong to "the club." For schools that gain access to the process, this means that on the flip side of the happy and collaborative jump in quality there is a much more serious demarcation and revealing redefinition of the accredited entity's future supporters, collaborators, partners, and competitors. 203 Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holder's express written permission. Users may print, download, or email articles for individual use only.

The competitive environment is undergoing a fundamental change. Traditional markets are being replaced by networks. This poses major challenges for industrial companies. Management has to look beyond ordinary customer and supplier relationships into intricate webs of firms. This article focuses on the interaction between a complex business relationship and its immediate business network that we call a focal net. We contend that focal nets have several crucial roles in the emerging industrial network theory. They mediate the impact of the larger industrial networks into dyadic business relations; and vice versa, the influence of a dyad on a network is mediated by the focal net. Theoretical and managerial relevance of focal nets is demonstrated through a 30-year case study of three international corporations. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678.

The Journal of Management Inquiry astutely predicted in 2004 that the Americanization of business education would not just continue but increase. Ten years later, it is arguable that the acceleration of the Americanization of management education has exceeded all expectations. To theoretically build toward understanding how and why the American business education model has been adopted to different extents, this comparative study builds on the institutional logics perspective, arguing that different institutional logics can potentially explain the various forms and patterns of Americanization and how they are manifested in the world's business schools.