Managing the Contractor-Customer Relationship

Ethical Issues that Can Arise in Contracting 

The act of contracting may not be a bed of roses as it appears when two or more parties sign a formal agreement that involves a business deal (Schleper, Blome & Wuttke, 2017). There are ethical concerns that surround a contract between a contractor and a customer such as in the engineering and construction industry. One of the ethical concerns of a contracting process is the cultural expectations attached to the practice (Schleper, Blome & Wuttke, 2017). Albers, Wohlgezogen, & Zajac (2016) agree with (Schleper, Blome & Wuttke, 2017) by stating that Different parts of the world have different people who may have different ideas regarding the contracts and their durability. For instance, the Japanese view a deal as a formal document that signifies the beginning of working together between a contractor and a client, and not as a document that is legally binding the two or more parties (Albers, Wohlgezogen, & Zajac, 2016). That is contrary to the western view of the same whereby some countries such as the united states of America view contracts as obligatory and binding documents that also signify the beginning of official business(Albers, Wohlgezogen, & Zajac, 2016). Therefore, the difference in the view of contracts may detriment the ease of signing the agreements in engineering and construction and especially where a Japanese contractor has to deal with an American client (Albers, Wohlgezogen, & Zajac, 2016). 

The other ethical concern in contracting is the lack of informed consent for one or both of the parties that are involved in the contract. The lack of the informed consent in the engineering and construction contracts may detriment the ability of either or both of the parties to sign the documents that would officiate the legally binding agreement (Sheaff, 2017). Some of the factors that may contribute to the lack of informed consent among the parties in a contract are the limited amount of time to go through the resources, availability of little money that hardly takes care of the processes that are involved in the deals (Sheaff, 2017). The other factors are exhaustion due to the processes involved in the contractual agreements and the legal procedures such as the hiring and the payment of a lawyer to initialize and close the deal (Sheaff, 2017). The procession of the contract without the informed consent may result to the formalizing of the agreement without consideration of the parties, which is against the contractual laws in the various parts of the world (Sheaff, 2017). 

The other ethical issue surrounding the contractual agreements in the various parts of the world is moral relativism. Moral relativism may occur when a wealthy person decides to use his money and fame to control the outcomes of a contractual process (Alkhatib, 2017). It would be considered ethically wrong to do so since the contracting agreements such as those in the engineering and construction industry are supposed to be a friendly platform for both parties in the contract to formally create and grow their corporate networks with each other (Alkhatib, 2017). The victim of moral relativism is usually the parties with a low monetary power. The outcomes of the contract may become unfair for them when the perpetrator of the relativism uses his ability to change the terms of the deal, forces a customer to enter into an agreement even forces the customer or the client to enter into an agreement at his or her time(Alkhatib, 2017). 

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Dispute Process 

In case the terms of a contract such as in the engineering and construction industry are breached, either of the parties may appeal to a mediator such as a court of law. The parties may be involved in the dispute process, which may have various strengths and weaknesses. One of the strengths of the dispute process is that the time taken to reach the final resolution is less than the time taken to sue either party for the branch of the contractual terms. This is because the parties have more flexibility in selecting the rules that could apply to the dispute that the parties are having (Gelfand & McCusker, 2017). For instance, some of the terms they set for their dispute process would be relevant to their industry such as the engineering and the construction industry. They can also adjust their terms of the dispute resolutions to suit their religious and cultural beliefs (Gelfand & McCusker, 2017). 

The other strength of the dispute process is that the parties involved in the contractual agreement can have an expert arbitrate or mediate between them in their engineering and construction field. It would take time if the natter were to be handled by a judge in a court of law, more time would be spent in the dispute process since the jury has to be educated first on the filed or sector that is featured in the dispute (Gelfand & McCusker, 2017). The arbitration or the meditation in the engineering and construction agreement breaches may spend less money or the parties involved in the process. This is because the arbitrator or the mediator has already been exposed to in-depth knowledge of the field involved in the breach of a contract. The ability of the dispute resolution process to involve a conflict resolution expert in the field enables the parties in the field to confide in the expert, which eases the resolution process (Gelfand & McCusker, 2017). 

The dispute process, nevertheless, has some weaknesses that may be a barrier to its effectiveness. One of the shortcomings in the dispute process is that the arbitrational and the mediational experts can only handle the disputes that involve money (Lee, Yiu & Cheung, 2016). This is because the experts cannot issue the orders such as those issued by a court of law to compel one party to do some things. For instance, the arbitrators cannot issue an injunction to either of the parties requiring them to refrain from some of the factors that could actively be contributing to their dispute in their signed contract (Lee, Yiu & Cheung, 2016). The mediators cannot also have the ability to change the ownership of property, for example, from one party to another. That impedes the efficiency of the dispute process, which may lead to one of the parties or both taking advantage of the others and doing wrong things in the contract at the expense of the other parties who may not have a voice (Lee, Yiu & Cheung, 2016). 

Importance of the Communication Process in the Contractor-Customer Relationship 

Erlandsson & Fjeld (2017) states that Effective communication between the contractors and the customers in the engineering industries is one of the critical factors favoring the development of relationships in business between them that may lead to a successful contractual agreement. The communication process makes the changes in the contractual agreements easier that it would have been without the process of communication between the contractor and the customer (Erlandsson & Fjeld, 2017). Notably, the process of communication establishes and develops closer relationships and corporate ties between the customers and the contractors, which makes it easy for both of the parties to introduce and discuss the contractual changes freely and with a sense of understanding. The process nullifies the roughness that the changes in the market and the contract itself may cause to the agreement at large (Erlandsson & Fjeld, 2017). The contractor also gains the customers' trust through the effectiveness of the process of communication between the two parties. That makes the customer base to grow as the already existing and satisfied customers, according to Erlandsson & Fjeld (2017), attract new customers. 

The communication process creates a channel for the flow of new ideas between the contractor and the customer as it has been put across by Erlandsson & Fjeld (2017). Conventionally, a contractor in the engineering and construction industry such as in the United States may have better know how of the market conditions that may affect the business deals they are closing with the customers (Erlandsson & Fjeld, 2017). Increasingly, the customers in the country are soon becoming a source of new ideas in the contractual world. The feedback that the customers give in the contractual agreements may also be quintessential to the quality of the interactions they have. All that credit goes to the presence of an active communication process in the contractual agreements (Erlandsson & Fjeld, 2017). Communication in contracting also helps the contractors to understand what the customers want from the agreements by talking to a representative of the whole customer base. When the customers realize that the contractors are putting their needs and interest first, they are satisfied (Erlandsson & Fjeld, 2017). 

The other importance of the communication process in contracting is that both the contractors and the customers learn the communication skills that may be helpful to them when negotiating business deals in the future (Erlandsson & Fjeld, 2017). The partners in the agreement with constant practice acquire excellent communication skills. The excellent communication skills form a foundation for the healthy discussions that may lead to the deals that are worthwhile (Erlandsson & Fjeld, 2017). The organizations in the engineering and construction and particularly the contracting ones should invest in communication skills to appeal to the potential customers in the market. In a country such as the United States of America, the customers' essence in the company services is magnified. The customer is regarded as the king (Kim & Aggarwal, 2016). The growth and development of communication skills, obtained from the effectiveness of the communication process, becomes one of the critical methods of attracting the customer to the business. 

Risks and Responsibilities in the Contractor-Customer Relationship 

One of the dangers in the contractor –customer relationship, according to Eriksson, LeBel & Lindroos (2015), is the failure to meet a precedent condition, which could be critical to the establishment of a fruitful relationship in the contractual world. Sometimes, one of the parties in the agreement can have a sunset clause pass without the involvement of any action in the meeting of the conditions (Eriksson, LeBel & Lindroos, 2015). Both parties agree to rectify the problem that is affecting the effectiveness of the agreement but instead carries on with the contract as if nothing happened. That may reduce the confidence of one of the parties in the contractual agreement (Eriksson, LeBel & Lindroos, 2015). 

The other risk in the contractor-customer relationship is the missing of deadlines, deliverables, and achievements (Eriksson, LeBel & Lindroos, 2015). Time is one of the factors that influence the efficiency of a contract between a client and the contractor. The lack of proper timekeeping and failure to keep promises on either side of the parties may adversely affect the contractual agreements such as by undermining their effectiveness (Eriksson, LeBel & Lindroos, 2015). This could have various effects on the relationship based on how late the submission of the details and deliverable is. For instance, some companies may go bankrupt just because they could not keep a deadline. That could be the end period of business agreement that would have otherwise been successful had things been done at the right time (Eriksson, LeBel & Lindroos, 2015). 

The modeling of a successful contractor-customer relationship is dependent on the observance of the responsibilities of both parties in the contract, as Byrne & Mo (2015) elaborates. One of the duties of both parties is the specificity of what they want to be done by the other parties. Clarity is paramount to the effectiveness of business deals in the engineering and construction sector (Byrne & Mo, 2015). The instructions given by either the customer or the contractor to be followed by either of them should be a point-blank description of what they would like done. That cements the relationship and reduces risks such as the surpassing of a deadline (Byrne & Mo, 2015). 

Summatively, Byrne & Mo (2015) describes the other responsibility of both the customers and the contractors as punctuality. For the contractual agreements, timekeeping is an essential tool for gaining either parties trust in the contract. Traditionally, the customers have placed continuously huge expectations on the contractors to keep check of their time while they may not keep time (Byrne & Mo, 2015). For the effectiveness of contracts, timekeeping has to be a two-way street. Both contractor and customers should ensure that they have delivered what is expected of them at the right time and accurately. Payments have to be done at the time that has been promised by the customer to boost the relationship between the customers and the contractor (Byrne & Mo, 2015). 

References 

Albers, S., Wohlgezogen, F., & Zajac, E. J. (2016). Strategic alliance structures: An organization Design perspective. Journal of Management , 42 (3), 582-614. 

Alkhatib, O. J. (2017). A Moral (Normative) Framework for the Judgment of Actions and Decisions in the Construction Industry and Engineering: Part II. Science and engineering ethics , 23 (6), 1617-1641. 

Byrne, T., & Mo, J. P. (2015). Critical factors for design of successful performance-based Contracting environment. International Journal of Agile Systems and Management , 8 (3-4), 305-331. 

Eriksson, M., LeBel, L., & Lindroos, O. (2015). Management of outsourced forest harvesting Operations for better customer-contractor alignment. Forest Policy and Economics , 53 , 45-55. 

Erlandsson, E., & Fjeld, D. (2017). Impacts of service buyer management on contractor Profitability and satisfaction–a Swedish case study. International Journal of Forest Engineering , 28 (3), 148-156. 

Gelfand, M. J., & McCusker, C. (2017). Metaphor and the cultural construction of negotiation: A Paradigm for research and practice. The Blackwell Handbook of Cross ‐ Cultural Management , 292-314. 

Kim, C. S., & Aggarwal, P. (2016). The customer is king: culture-based unintended Consequences of modern marketing. Journal of Consumer Marketing , 33 (3), 193-201. 

Lee, C. K., Yiu, T. W., & Cheung, S. O. (2016). Selection and use of alternative dispute Resolution (ADR) in construction projects—Past and future research. International Journal of Project Management , 34 (3), 494-507. 

Schleper, M. C., Blome, C., & Wuttke, D. A. (2017). The dark side of buyer power: Supplier Exploitation and the role of ethical climates. Journal of Business Ethics , 140 (1), 97-114. 

Sheaff, M. (2017). Constructing accounts of organisational failure: Policy, power and Concealment. Critical Social Policy , 37 (4), 520-539.