在經營環境快速變動及全球化競爭之下，企業經營面對愈來愈大的競爭壓力。此外，在消費者需求愈趨多樣化與個人化的時代，僅憑個別企業之力量與資源，已很難有效地滿足顧客之需求。因此，企業開始思考著結合其他企業的力量，在供應鏈上尋求與其上下游的廠商分工合作，建立優勢的供應鏈，進而提升顧客服務的水準。於是，夥伴關係的管理乃成為目前企業經營的主流；尤其是中小企業更積極地透過與其通路成員之間建立策略性的夥伴關係，以提升其競爭優勢。 然而，夥伴關係並非萬靈丹一服便萬事OK。許多公司在發展夥伴策略時並沒有注意到潛在的風險，因而導致關係失敗，未蒙其利反受其害。雖然以往之文獻對夥伴關係之著墨甚多，但至今尚無學者將夥伴關係之發展做一整合性的研究。有鑑於此，本文嘗試建立一個夥伴關係之整合模型，將夥伴關係之發展分成挑選夥伴、建立關係和維持長期關係三個階段，並探討各個階段之關鍵性因素。 另一方面，中小企業在台灣一直扮演著相當重要的角色，然而，由於近年來國內外經濟變化劇烈，使中小企業在許多方面因其規模較小之限制而遭遇許多瓶頸。因此，本研究將探討中小企業之特質，並以中小企業作為發展夥伴關係之實證。

Facing drastic change and global competition in the business environments, firms take more challenges than before. Furthermore, in the era that consumers pursue more variety and personality on the merchandises, individual firm is hard to satisfy with customer’s demands. Thus, many firms begin to think about combining other firm’s resources by establishing partner relationship within their supply chain and thus promote the customer service level to compete. It’s now a business main stream to gain competitive advantage, especially for the small and middle firms. However, partnership is not a panacea. Many strategic partner relationships often fail, because firms often overlook the drawbacks or hazards of such relationships. There were many literatures about partnerships, but still no one develops an integrative model so far as, this paper will do. This model combines three stages：partner selection, relationship establishment, and relationship maintenance; each stage has its key successful factors. Small and middle firms have been playing a very important role for the economic development in Taiwan. But in recent years due to the drastic change in the domestic and foreign economic environments, the small and middle firms have encountered many difficulties. This paper will conduct an empirical study, stressing on the characteristics of small and middle firms in term of their partnership development.