The Hindu Business Line : <I>End adversarial commerce </I>

Commerce can go wrong when it is adversarial, says Thomas T. Stallkamp in `Score!' from Pearson Education (www.pearsoned.co.in) . He defines `adversarial commerce' as "the negative and domineering manner many companies use to control their relationships in normal business dealings."

Adversarial commerce is a common phenomenon, which shows as `economic leverage' applied by the dominant party in `a dictatorial, arbitrary manner'. The company forces the subordinate party to concede to demands without considering the financial hardship or long-term effects those demands might create, explains Stallkamp.

One of the examples he cites is of Wal-Mart, which takes `increasingly tough stances with its supply chain as it dominates the mass-merchandising retail business'. As a consequence, "suppliers are being pushed to outsource to overseas locations to provide the immediate cost relief to Wal-Mart." Instant price reductions and front-loaded cost `contributions' are reducing the collective profitability of the industry, rues the author. Another adverse effect of adversarial commerce is the break of trust, such as what happened when GM was accused of `taking proprietary drawings from one source and sending to another for quotation'. It takes a lot of time to rebuild an environment of trust after it has been damaged, observes Stallkamp. Communication is a sure casualty in adversarial commerce. "Despite major innovations in data processing, meaningful communication remains poor and spotty throughout many supply chains," laments the author. A few `time-tested adversarial' ways of communicating are as follows: "Spoon-feeding only information that is absolutely necessary to land a contract; ordering more than planned to get a discount, only to revise the order later under some pretext of change; sending notification that a project has been cancelled just before doing so; and dabbling in all sorts of other mischief." All, to keep the other party in perpetual tension!

In due course, the poison spreads; adversarial attitude trickles on to the management style with employees. "The history of labour relations is characterised by adversarial behaviour in many industries, from automobiles to airlines, telecommunications to trucking."

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D. Murali