Robert E. Spekman

For well over a decade, Darden Professors Robert E. Spekman and Edward W. Davis have been interested in the extended enterprise, a collaborative approach to supply chain management in which key members view one another as partners rather than adversaries.

A territory is a salesperson’s battleground; it’s the turf that he or she defends. As one of the first decisions that many sales executives make, territory assignment can be quite a complex process, serving several goals — and stakeholders — at once.

There is not a sector of the economy that does not rely on alliances to gain a competitive advantage. Alliances require soft skills that many managers with command-and-control backgrounds need to acquire in order to create successful partnerships.