Trust is the expectation that the other party will behave in a predictable and mutually acceptable way. In inter-firm relationships, the presence and absence of trust can affect the level of cost in a relationship. The existence of trust is taught to lower the transaction cost in a relationship. Dr. Mari Sako identified taxonomy of
3 types of trust in commercial relationship, which is very useful from the perspective of procurement.
Contractual trust: Trust based on the contract with TOP. This is potentially the weakest source of trust if there is nothing else to base the trust on, but it is the quickest to establish.
Competence trust: Trust based on TOP's professional qualifications or proven or certified technical capability or experience.
Goodwilltrust: Trust based on knowing TOP has your interest at heart and will not behave opportunistically.
This is potentially the strongest type of trust, but it takes the longest time to build.

Explanation
Trust-destroying behaviours:
- Rumours of partnership or relationship breaking down
- Emotion-based assessment of performance
- Avoiding accountability, passing the blame to others
- General mood - resentment, distrust,frustration, etc
LO 1, AC 1.4

Explanation
Reflecting on performance should become a natural final step in the negotiation process.
'Celebrating publicly about the deal': Public gloating, even in success or failure, if it gets back to the supplier via the press or social media, will likely damage the relationship
'Tempting TOP to reopen the negotiation': whether TOP agrees to reopen the negotiation, procurement should reflect on their achievement and what can be improved.
'Asking TOP for another concession': TOP can agree or rejectthis concession. Eventually, reflecting should be the final step. Procurement can learn a lot from reflection on performance.
LO 3, AC 3.4

According to the book 'Influencing: Skills and techniques for business success' by Fiona Dent and Mike Brent, there are two major influencing styles. Push tends to be directive. It tells, and is clear and resolute, but needs to be employed in situations where firmness is required because of difficulties that exist or weakness is evident.
Pull is more participatory and collaborative. It seeks to incorporate everyone's perspective. It can appear wishy-washy if not skilfully employed. That approach should be followed which is most likely to secure commitment and not mere compliance.
The two divisions can be further divided into four style categories: directive; persuasive reasoning; collaborative - team oriented, people oriented to inspire them with a vision. The directive style relies on your expertise and reputation being respected by others, and where there really does seem to be one answer. It is "I" driven whereas persuasive reasoning is more "we" and issue driven. Directive styles can make the user appear as "a bull in a china shop"; persuasive reasoning can be portrayed as tough guy.
Collaborative influencing takes the "we" element further and seeks to mobilise everyone's ideas in a journey of discovery. It may have the flavour of "I'm your best friend", which may not go down too well. Visioning style is concerned to stir people's emotions in support of achieving an objective. This last one has been used by demagogues to stir people's hearts and minds for evil purposes as well as good.
A useful table offers the benefits, problems, words and body language associated with each style along with advice on when to use and when to avoid each. Cases and exercises illustrate these styles.
Empathy comes in for extended treatment with the definition of "standing in the other's shoes". This does not necessarily happen just intuitively, and therefore before a specific influencing effort there should bean intense effort to think about the other person or persons and to sense what it might feel like to be them - their hopes, fears, concerns, what turns them on, what turns them off, where are they coming from.

Explanation
Elasticity refers to the responsiveness of quantity demanded or quantity supplied to a change in price or another factor.
In microeconomic graphs,elasticity and inelasticity can be shown by the slope of the demand curve. If a demand curve is almost horizontal, then the product pricing can be described as very elastic. If a demand curve is almost vertical, then the product pricing can be described asvery inelastic.
The formulae of elasticity:
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LO 2, AC 2.2