Abstract

In order to maintain market position, one of the critical issues facing companies is how they can improve their commitment management. In this paper, the concept of commitment management is used to understand how suppliers and customers create mutual commitments in business agreements, and how these commitments are fulfilled. In a number of empirical case studies, commitment management problems have been the direct consequence of deficiencies in the infrastructural support. One example of such lacking infrastructural support are IT systems intended to support this commitment management process. This is of particular interest in a context of commitments created in parallel business transactions that compete for the same delivery capacity. The aim of the paper is to describe, analyse and propose solutions to some of these problems. This paper proposes a necessary extension to a framework for business interaction between suppliers and customers. This extension is based on business action theory, workpractice theory and ideas from yield management.