Actors, resources, activities and commitments

a r t i c l e i n f o A new concept, commitments, is introduced and defined as " agreements between two or more social actors to carry out future actions " and its incorporation into, and articulation of, the actors–resources–activities model described. Commitments are distinguished from the concept of commitment as traditionally used in inter-organisational relationships. The latter is mainly an affective measure at the level of an individual concerning the general relationship between buying and selling organisations. By contrast commitments are agreements made between actors and range from the specific and everyday to the general and strategic. The theoretical background and nature of commitments are described and how commitments relate to and enrich each of the elements of the ARA model demonstrated. The application of the concept to B2B relationships at the level of individual, group, organisational and net actors is set out and implications of the use of the commitments concept for researchers and managers are suggested. In this paper we introduce the concept of commitments which is defined as; " agreements between two or more social actors to carry out future actions ". For example — " I will make sure that you are informed earlier next time ". The term commitments is used in the plural in this paper in order to indicate that it is a different use of the word commitment, from that which is deployed in B2B network relationship descriptions, where it is used alongside 'trust' to describe positive affective, attitudinal and behavioural aspects of relationships between actors which are likely to lead to the continuation of a relationship. Commitment resides within actors, such that one actor may be fully committed to another while the other actor may not be at all committed. In contrast commitments essentially exist in the space between actors. We show how this concept can be used to enrich and articulate the actors, resources and activities (ARA) model (Hakansson & Johanson, 1992). The commitments concept introduces the notion of purpo-siveness into the model and in doing so provides a clearer view of how and why actors, resources and activities are linked and helps to explain interaction and network outcomes. The ARA model represented a major step forward in terms of conceptualising B2B relationships and networks. It is not simply that it identified a trio of concepts. It also suggested mechanisms by which the entities relate to …