Using Business Action Theory for Dyadic Analysis

Relationships between dyads of customers and suppliers have been a critical research interest for a long time. The importance of understanding inter-organisational interaction between business actors is increasing as the competitiveness of organisations seems to rely more and more on their ability to establish and maintain close relationships with their business partners. This paper is focused on the need for understanding inter-organisational interaction on a dyadic level. In order to understand business interaction we use a conceptual model called Business Action Theory (BAT) phase model. The BAT model describes generic business acts performed by customers and suppliers. The theoretical sources behind BAT are language action theories and theories concerning industrial networks and relationship marketing. The purpose of this paper is to describe the application of the BAT phase model when analysing the dyadic interaction between two organisations; a sawmill and a carpentry firm. The paper consists of a thoroughly presentation of the BAT model and its theoretical sources. The BAT model is also briefly compared to the IMP model. The aim is to further develop and provide a usable phase model for understanding and analysing inter-organisational interaction. We use the BAT phase model to characterise internal and dyadic actions at the sawmill and the carpentry firm. We also characterise problems that we identified during our case study as either mainly internal or dyadic problems. The identified problems are related to the BAT phase model as well. The paper finally reports some experiences from conducting a dyadic analysis in this way.

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