Contracting in the New Economy: Using Relational Contracts to Boost Trust and Collaboration in Strategic Business Relationships

Today’s business environment is constantly evolving, filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity and driven by digital transformation, globalization, and the need to creating value through innovation. These shifts demand that organizations view contracting through a different lens. Since it is impossible to predict every what-if scenario in a transactional contract, organizations in strategic and complex partnerships must shift to a mindset of shared goals and objectives built upon a strong foundation of transparency and trust, working together to mitigate risk much better than merely shifting risk to the weaker party.

Contracting in the New Economy helps you to not only develop this mindset – but also offers the practical tools needed to embrace the social side of contracting, enabling your organization to harness the value creating potential of formal relational contracts.  Briefly sharing the theoretical foundations that prove relationalcontracting works, it goes well beyond theory by providing powerful examples of relational contracting principles in practice.  

In addition, the authors provide a practical and proven approach for helping you to put relational contracting theory into practice for your own relationships. First by providing a framework for approaching any contracting situation and helping organizations finding the best contract model for each situation. And then by sharing five proven steps you can take to create an effective relational contract for you own strategic and complex business relationships.

David Frydlinger is a Partner at Cirio law firm in Sweden, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Tennessee and active in World Commerce & Contracting in Sweden. He is a Vested Certified Deal Architect and has more than twenty years of experience in drafting and negotiating outsourcing and other complex commercial contracts. David is also author and co-author of several books, including Getting to We: Negotiating Agreements for Highly Collaborative Relationships. 

Kate Vitasek is a world authority on highly collaborative win-win relationships for her award-winning research and Vested® business model. Author of six books and a Graduate and Executive Education faculty member at the University of Tennessee, Vitasek has been lauded by World Trade Magazine as one of the “Fabulous 50+1” most influential people impacting global commerce. Vitasek is a contributor for Forbes magazine and has been featured on CNN International, Bloomberg, NPR, and Fox Business News.

Jim Bergman is the CEO of Commercial Officers Group, an advisory and training firm focused on establishing high-yield contracting for a global client base and across multiple sectors.  He has over thirty years of “in the trenches” experience in commercial contracting, initially as a contract attorney, with an emphasis on collaborative and strategic models.  He has developed contracting processes for a number of Fortune 500 companies, and his efforts have generated value worth over US$500 million.

Tim Cummins is the President of World Commerce & Contracting, formerly IACCM. Tim works with leading corporations, public and academic bodies, supporting executive awareness and understanding of the role that procurement, contracting and relationship management increasingly play in 21st century business performance and public policy.  Prior to WCC, Tim's business career included executive roles at IBM and a period on the Chairman's staff, leading studies on the impacts of globalization and the re-engineering of IBM's global contracting processes.