Paper info

A Participatory Action Research Study of Key Account Management Changes

Alan Gilchrist , Geoff Easton and Peter Lenney

The paper was published at the 20th IMP-conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2004.

Pure Participatory Action Research projects in the IMP research tradition are rather rare. This paper describes both the process and the outcomes of such a project carried out for a major business to retail firm in the UK. The issue at hand was, and is, Key Account Management, defined in a very broad way. The process is one of changing the ways in which the actors in the firm at different levels work together to try to coordinate the long term strategy and short term operations in relation to powerful retail customers. The outcomes for the firm have, so far, been very positive. The outcomes for the researchers are too early to fully evaluate but look very promising.