Authors: Chris Ellegaard
Industrial customers need to influence suppliers. One approach to influencing involves becomingattractive to attract the attention of suppliers. However, customer attractiveness is a complicatedphenomenon, involving sensemaking with supplier actors as a critical issue. This paper is one of thefirst results from a research project on sensemaking and attractiveness. Two industrial suppliers andtheir relations to customers are investigated with the purpose of building knowledge onsensemaking processes in supplier actor groups. The analysis is based on Weick’s sensemakingtheory. The findings show that suppliers make sense about different issues, connected toattractiveness. Moreover the two suppliers work under different sensemaking processes, employingdifferent frameworks for interpretation. A sensemaking profile framework is proposed to supportand facilitate the analysis of supplier’s sensemaking profiles. By analysing these profiles, theprocess of becoming attractive can be better understood.
Journal: ( – )
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Publish Year: 2004
Conference: Copenhagen, Denmark (2004)