Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of senior managers in managing intra-and inter-organizational relationships with key customers and the factors that influence such involvement in a novel context in the Arab Middle East region.

An exploratory qualitative research design was used in which 68 face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted in Jordan with endogenous and Western firms.

Top/senior managers play a significant role in Arab business relationships and in creating value for the firms. Their involvement in key accounts is imperative at all levels – strategic, operational, and relational – mainly due to cultural and institutional factors that are unique to the Arab context.

The study is limited to operations in one emerging country situated in a novel setting in one particular region of the world, which is the Middle East.

Arab senior managers’ participation is imperative and should continue with their relatively intense involvement with key accounts. For foreign investors operating in that part of the world, it is highly recommended that senior management have a more a hands-on approach when dealing with the Arab key customer and to focus more on the relational aspect of key account management than on the organizational aspect.

This paper adds to the very limited number of studies on senior management involvement in key account management, making a theoretical and practical contribution and adding insight on how to manage the relationship with the Arab key customer.

This paper aims to highlight the importance of relational resources (trust and relationship effectiveness). The authors investigate how the Chinese guanxi is utilized to create and develop service exploitation and exploration activities for adopting non-technological innovations.

This study surveyed 252 Chinese and Taiwanese firms. The results were analyzed through structural equation model.

Relational antecedents of collaborative communication and constructive conflict positively relate to trust, as well as to relationship effectiveness. Constructive conflict positively relates to exploration and exploitation. Relationship effectiveness and trust mediate two relational antecedents to exploitation. Relationship effectiveness crucially mediates two relational antecedents to exploration.

Dyadic data would be more desirable to study firm interactions.

Chinese society perceives conflict as being detrimental to relationships. Constructive conflict enhances inter-firm trust and relationship effectiveness. Relationship effectiveness, which motivates suppliers to mobilize their guanxi network, mediates the supplier–customer interaction in broadening relationships to produce new services, as well as reinforcing networks to strengthen existing ventures.

This study contributes to a relatively under-explored relationship effectiveness area. Chinese suppliers capitalize their guanxi networks to achieve competitive advantages in non-technological innovation.

Interpersonal and informal ties and networks, known as wasta in the Arab Middle East region, remain a major force in Middle Eastern societies, determining most economic, social and political outcomes. Yet the literature on informal ties and networks is largely characterized by a lack of contributions from the Arab world, despite the adverse effect that lack of understanding of the wasta phenomenon is having on the effectiveness of expatriate managers and subsequently on business performance. This chapter therefore aims to shed light on the meaning, characteristics, structure, and role of wasta in establishing and maintaining successful business relationships. It ends with recommendations for foreign investors and international managers who wish to establish and maintain successful business relationships in the Middle East on how to capitalize on interpersonal networks within this process.

The strategy of carefully selecting the most important group of business customers for special treatment – for which several terms are in use – has come in for considerable recent attention from both academics and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to examine “strategic account management” at a large telecommunications operator in a developing country (“Arab Telco”).

The paper presents an in‐depth single‐company case study.

The approach to strategic account management employed by Arab Telco shows excellent fit with the recommendations of Western authorities about the implementation of such programs. In particular, there is evidence that the program is being implemented sincerely, with the allocation of additional resources to the strategic account function and the delivery of special treatment to strategic account customers. However, the strategic account program is still relatively immature and the term “key account management” is also in use at Arab Telco; this term refers to many customers who are not of particular strategic significance to the company.

Further research is needed into the impact of culture‐specific factors on the implementation of strategic account management. The transference of Western marketing models to emerging economies offers fruitful scope for additional research.

The paper examines the direct transfer of a well‐known Western management technique – i.e. strategic account management – to a major company in an emerging economy in the Arab world.

This paper seeks to explore the nature of the human resource reforms introduced by a French multinational into a privatized Jordanian utility and the impact of these reforms on worker experiences, attitudes and behaviour.

The approach takes the form of a single‐company case study using longitudinal interview data (44 interviews over a period of two and a half years) and a staff survey (202 completed and usable replies).

Employees had experienced changes as a result of the HR reforms and these experiences were, at the aggregate level, associated with a number of positive attitudinal and behavioural outcomes. There were marked differences between different categories of staff in these respects, with more senior staff and those with higher educational qualifications being those most likely to report positive attitudinal and behavioural outcomes.

Studies of the transfer of Western management techniques to developing countries cannot treat the workforce as homogeneous. There are likely to be important differences between groups based on demographic criteria such as education, job category and length of service. However, this project used a single‐company case study and so is capable of only limited generalization.

The differences between employee groups in attitudes towards the HR reforms are best seen as the outcome of “deliberate intent” on the part of the French MNC rather than intra‐organisational variations in “cultural receptivity”. They indicate that, to some extent, MNCs can successfully pursue different human resource approaches in respect of different categories of staff. However, some employees felt that they were adversely affected by the reforms.

The paper contributes an in‐depth empirical study to the important but relatively under‐researched area of the transfer of management techniques by MNCs to companies in developing countries.