The Substance of Business Banking Relationships

The concept of business banking relationship, ie, the relations between banks and their client firms, as found in literature, is a poor conceptualisation of a rich and complex phenomenon whose structural, dynamic and organisational aspects are thus neglected. Most studies stress the operative and administrative issues whilst others looked at the relationships between banks and their customers as if they were just another variable in the banks marketing mix. Besides, very rarely have relationships themselves (between banks and their customers) been taken as the object of research and analysis This paper seeks to provide a new understanding of the substance of banking relationships. It presents a comparative study of ten banking relationships in Portugal, using the interaction and network approach development by the “IMP Group” in the context of industrial (manufacturing) systems. The study reported here also deals with relationships between firms, but the fact that one of the participants is a bank induces numerous specificities.