1 EXPECTATION MANAGEMENT IN BUSINESS RELATIONS: STRATEGIES AND TACTICS Tuula Mittilä and Anne-Mari Järvelin University of Tampere, School of Business Administration Abstract For an actor to survive in the hardening competitive world the management of expectations is crucial. The aim of our paper is to elaborate the strategies and tactics of expectation management in business-to-business setting. We start by presenting the nature and sources of expectations, then move on to discuss relationship management strategy and relation portfolio. After that, a classification of expectation management strategies is introduced and tactics for practice are presented. Finally, we divide expectations into classis, mega and nano expectations and suggest that by engaging in qualitative study of expectations in business forecasting research we would gain new knowledge in the area. 1 Introduction Actors in business relations continuously evaluate the status quo and future of their own as well as of the others. In order to engage to a new partner the evaluation criteria differ from those used in existing relations. Comparison standards play a central role in the status quo evaluation which often takes a form of comparison between expectations and perceived performance. In evaluating the future of a relation expectations used in the comparison are mainly based on experiences derived from the past. Relation management can be targeted to handling the status quo situation in a relation, taking care of the existing demands and wants of an other party. As business relations tend to be long term in nature, relation management should also be concentrated on the future of the relation. Expectation management is one way of managing the future of business relations. It can be even argued that for an actor to survive in the hardening competitive world the management of expectations is crucial. The purpose of our paper is to elaborate strategies and tactics of expectation management in business-to-business setting. This is done by first discussing the nature of expectations in business relations, and, after that, possible strategies for expectation