The business realization cycle: purpose-explicit interaction in IMP research

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to examine how purposive orientation can be analytically integrated into industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) interaction research to explain how interorganizational business engagement is formed, coordinated, enacted, assessed and redirected over time. It addresses the problem that purposive elements are present across IMP research but remain distributed among different concepts and research streams rather than consolidated into an integrated process logic of business realization. Design/methodology/approach The article adopts an integrative conceptual theory-development approach. IMP interaction research provides the domain theory, while selected concepts from social action theory – end orientation, orientation to others and temporal structuring – serve as method-theoretical resources. Through problematization and conceptual synthesis, these resources are translated into the business realization cycle (BRC) and subsequently reintegrated with IMP concepts concerning interaction episodes, relationship conditions and network embeddedness. Findings The BRC conceptualizes business realization through three analytically distinct but empirically interwoven phases: Preparation, Agreement and Fulfilment. Preparation concerns the formation and testing of anticipated outcomes and mutual relevance; Agreement concerns the stabilization of commitments, consent, responsibilities and expectations; and Fulfilment concerns the enactment of commitments and the organizational assessment of realized outcomes. Feedback generated through assessment redirects subsequent engagement towards renewal, redesign, scaling, dormancy, termination or renewed Preparation. The model is recursive and trajectory-sensitive rather than a linear relationship-development sequence. Research limitations/implications The BRC is a middle-range conceptual model rather than a comprehensive theory of business interaction. Its explanatory usefulness, boundary conditions and empirical manifestations require investigation across different relationship histories, power configurations, project settings, digital platforms and network structures. Comparative and longitudinal studies could examine phase overlap, assessment divergence and recursive trajectory redirection. Practical implications The BRC provides managers with a diagnostic and reflexive framework rather than a prescriptive checklist. It helps identify whether an engagement currently requires clarification of anticipated outcomes and mutual relevance, stabilization or revision of commitments, adaptation during enactment, organizational assessment or redirection towards a different relationship trajectory. Originality/value The article does not introduce purposiveness into IMP interaction research as an external concern. Its originality lies in integrating purposive elements already present within the IMP tradition into a purpose-explicit, phase-sensitive and evaluation-aware process logic. The BRC thereby connects observable interactions with the formation, realization, assessment and redirection of business purposes while retaining the relational and network-embedded ontology of IMP research.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, 2026 · DOI ↗