Rarely do organizations operate in isolation. Suppliers, sub-contractors, customers, and other entities are the associates, and the relationships with them are the things we can control. We evaluate them based on things like their size, makeup, location, and other similar properties we identify as appropriate to decision-making, and then we use things like non-disclosure agreements, legal processes, monitoring, service levels, acceptance testing, payment time frames, credit worthiness, and so forth to make initial and ongoing decisions about changing or maintaining the relationships.
