Building Long-Term Manufacturer-Retailer Relationships through Strategic Human Resource Management Policies: A System Dynamics Approach

This paper is the result of a research project conducted by the authors with a manufacturer operating in the high-tech industry. It is based on the hypotheses that in order to successfully support retail stores, a manufacturer has to design policies based on Human Resources Management (HRM) practices aimed to increase retailers employees’ sales effectiveness, and external-oriented policies to foster potential customers’ acceptance of company product benefits. In order to support decision makers to explore alternative scenarios and to foster managerial learning on how to build strong and long term successfully manufacturer-retail outlets relationships, a System Dynamics model has been built. In today’s economy all manufacturers need to pay attention on how to build strong and long-term relationships with their retail outlets chain. In such a context, empirical analysis emphasised the crucial role of the human resource sub-system. The use of a System Dynamics model allowed the authors to effectively support decision makers in exploring and evaluate alternative strategies and to foster managerial learning processes on how to build strong and long term successfully manufacturer-retailer relationships. It is worth remarking that the suggested human resources practices may represent an innovative vehicle for the development of studies aimed to adopt a systemic HRM approach.