Paper info

KEY ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT IN TIMES OF CHANGE: THE ROLE OF SENIOR MANAGERS

Giancarlo Pereira , Miriam Borchardt and Claudia Viegas

The paper was published at the 32nd IMP-conference in Poznan, Poland in 2016.

This article presents the previous results of an ongoing research that aims at identify the senior manager’s role in the key account management (KAM). The research was based on previous studies on KAM. The results of such studies focused on the following elements: interorganizational and intra-organizational challenges, teams/knowledge, and key account managers. Another research stream focused on the senior managers, since they can remove the internal and external forces that may block the KAM implementation, align goals/procedures, get involved in the decision-making of strategic issues, and induce the use of the customers' knowledge. Such actions mitigate the short-term orientation presented by some key account managers. In spite of the valuable work previously performed, the role of senior managers in KAM still seems to be an open question. This is especially true in the midsized suppliers that operate globally (no matter its importance in the B2B arena). Based on this assumption, this study is focused on how senior executives manage the changes requested by their customers. The suppliers’ selection was based on big buyers’ suggestions, since these big companies may be the key customers of several midsized suppliers.