2609 M Category: Mobile & Wireless Computing Mobile Technology Usage in Business Relationships Jari Salo University of Oulu, Finland Copyright © 2009, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. INTRODUCTION Business relationships have been studied for decades (Wilkinson, 2001). However, the literature has been criti- cized of the lack of focus on information technology (IT) usage within business relationships (Reid & Plank, 2000). As managers have started to employ digital tools such as the Internet, intranets, and extranets, buyer-seller relationship scholars have realized the need to focus on IT deployment within relationships. There is a growing body of research that focuses on the different types of technologies being employed such as electronic data interchange (EDI) (Naudé, Holland, & Sudbury, 2000), Internet-based EDI (Angeles, 2000), and extranet (Vlosky, Fontenot, & Blalock, 2000) and their inluence on business relationships. Nevertheless, mobile technology usage within business relationships is a nascent ield of scientiic inquiry. Besides buyer-seller relationship literature, mobile commerce (MC) (conducting commercial activities via mobile networks) literature also noticeably lacks academic research on business usage of mobile technology (Okazaki, 2005; Scornavacca, Barnes, & Huff, 2005). By combining these indications for further research from the buyer-seller relationship and MC ields it can be argued that there is a clear call for research in this area. Hence, I aim to bridge some aspects of the identiied research gap. The research gap is illed in by discussing bonding within buyer-seller relationships to illustrate how mobile technologies create a novel bond in business relationships. It is acknowledged that some research on the adoption of mobile technology in the business context exists (see e.g., Kadyté, 2005). The paper is organized as follows: First, a brief discussion of the background of business relationships, mobile technolo- gies, and bonding is provided. Then, I highlight how mobile technologies are used within relationships with a case study. After that, future trends in this pertinent area are presented. The paper inishes with a concluding discussion. BACKGROUND Basically, it can be stated that both the popular as well as academic press has regularly indicated that the number of relationships that exist between buyers and sellers has de- creased, but the amount of trade contracted within existing relationships has simultaneously increased. The fact remains that in many cases, it is not proitable to play dozens or even hundreds of competing suppliers or customers off against each other, but working directly with a few of them within a business relationship is proitable for all parties. This is because, as the number of possible partners increases so do the transaction costs. Thus, it is evident that existing business relationships are a vital area for research. Within the business relationships domain there are mul- tiple and overlapping ields of inquiry (Ritter & Gemünden, 2003) that have provided speciic frameworks applicable to different types of problems. Here, I use the bonding discus- sion as it provides a means to evaluate changes occurring in business relationships. A bond can be seen as a building block for a relationship that is created through interaction between business parties. Academic literature to date has identiied 10 bonds that are pertinent in business relationships: technical, time, knowledge, legal, economic, geographic, social, cultural, ideological, and psychological (Wendelin, 2004). Bonds have an important role in value creation and destruction in business relationships. Social bonds were the starting point of studies focusing on bonding (McCall, 1970). Before a business relationship is built through business exchanges, there are many dis- tances between the two interacting companies. Johanson and Wiedersheim-Paul (1975) identiied social, cultural, technological, and time-related distances. For example, social distance measures the extent to which the actors are unfamiliar with each other’s ways of thinking and working. Bonding is seen to reduce the distances. This paper focuses on technical bonds. Technical bonds play a crucial role when business par- ties are interacting. For example, if company A produces mobile phones and company B is a supplier of components, over time company A and B will usually create interfacing processes in which, for example R&D teams can meet to plan how new products can be produced in the most effective way. Hence it might be the case that company B adjusts its production so that it is more suitable to company A or buy some machinery speciically to deliver the new subassembly to company A. This type of adaptation and mutual planning of the manufacturing process within the business relationship can be seen as one type of technical bonding that has a crucial role in the development of business relationships.