Competence-based development with Open University and KIVI

Today's world is more dynamic than ever. Organisations are increasingly collaborating to create value, but working together is not a given. How do you prevent escalations and ensure sustainable relationships that make real impact? Find out during the webinar Towards enduring sourcing relationships on Thursday 24 April 2025.

Starting in 2025, the Open University will organise an inspiring webinar every two months focusing on one of the five core competences from the KIVI competence framework. These interactive sessions are designed to give you insight into the practical application of each competency and provide tools to continue your professional development.

This is the second webinar under the offer related to the KIVI competencies for Chartered Engineer and Young KIVI Engineers. This webinar focuses on the competency:

'Communication, stakeholder and team skills (D): 'Strengthen your collaboration and communication with different stakeholders.'

Webinar Towards enduring sourcing relationships

Today, we live in a networked world. Almost every organisation collaborates with other organisations in one way or another to deliver its range of products and services effectively and efficiently. Working together achieves synergy by bringing together different competences and creates more value than an individual organisation could achieve alone. However, working together is not trivial and is complicated by many factors, which can eventually lead to unwanted escalation or even a rift with major consequences.

In this webinar, in collaboration with Sourcing Netherlands, the challenges of strategic collaborations in particular are analysed from a dynamic and behavioural perspective and we explore possible solutions. This will include a discussion of the importance of 'social information systems' and the role signals play in this in perpetuating collaborations and reducing risks of failure. We will discuss current research that organisations themselves can actively participate in and directly benefit from.

About the speakers

Dr Harry Martin is associate professor in the Faculty of Science at the Open University. He studied Technical Business Administration at Eindhoven University of Technology where he later also obtained a PhD in the field of software selection for maintenance services and was an associate professor there. At a time when many maintenance services were being privatised or outsourced, his interest in strategic partnerships was aroused. In late 1999, he joined the Open University as associate professor and fulfilled various roles there in addition to his teaching duties such as chairman of the department, member of the research committee, member of the examinations committee. He was also external PhD examiner at Salford University (UK) and other international universities. He was also a visiting researcher at KU Leuven for several years. In addition, he has also been a senior consultant at KEMA. He was also a director at the International Foundation for Research in Maintenance and is currently a board member of the Vereniging Sourcing Nederland.

Dr Pieter Kamminga is an associate professor at the Open University's Faculty of Science. He studied business economics at the University of Groningen and at the same university he subsequently carried out doctoral research on the control of joint ventures. During this research, he spent four months as a visiting researcher at the Manchester Business School. From 1999, Pieter has been an associate professor, first at the University of Groningen and from 2010 at the Open University. His main activities include teaching and research. He has published in several renowned international journals, such as Accounting, Organisations and Society, Management Accounting Research, European Management Journal and Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal. Currently, his research focuses on the governance of IT-sourcing strategic partnerships. In addition, Pieter is active as chairman of the content committee in the association Sourcing Netherlands.

Registration information

Everyone is welcome to attend this webinar on Thursday 24 April 2025 at 20:00 via Microsoft Teams. During the session, you can ask questions via the chat function. You can register by filling in the registration form. You will receive a reminder in advance and again the link to participate. The duration of the webinar is about 60 minutes.

Other webinars will follow in June, September and November as part of the competences:

  • Technical Knowledge and Understanding (A),
  • Professional Commitment (E) and
  • Leadership, Responsibility and Quality (C).

For more information on our in-depth courses per competency, see our Competency-based Development with Open University and KIVI page.