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Key account management (KAM) programmes are a way for companies to develop existing relationships and increase sales, thus being proactive and searching for opportunities (which is often expected of KAM). It is also a way to meet changing customer demands arising from changes in purchasing strategy, buyers' mergers and acquisitions and the search for synergies in order to reduce costs. The purpose of this article is to analyse different key account management programmes on how they manage the sales process complexity and customer expectations.

The paper draws on qualitative data collected during a field study of ABB and six of their major customers, based on annual or biannual interviews with 50 individuals within ABB from 1996 to 2006 and three to ten individuals from each of the customers. Interviewees included corporate managers, key account managers and sales personnel/project managers. The customers involved in the study belonged to mining, automotive, process equipment manufacture, building technology, energy production and telecommunication sectors.

In this study three different programmes are identified and analysed: the proactive programme – which is driven by sales opportunity; the reactive programme – which is driven by customer demands; and the organisation‐based programme – which is driven by the belief in customer‐centric organisational units.

The paper identifies sales aspects (complexities) of KAM programmes that are handled in different ways by different types of programmes.

With an empirical base the paper provides a basis for understanding the reasons behind the establishment of several KAM programmes in the same corporation.

The existing literature on key account management (KAM) has focused more on sales forces and management levels than on their evolution. The purpose of this paper is to explore how sales activities can be coordinated to accommodate national and international KAM programs.

The paper is based on a longitudinal study of the industrial conglomerate ABB, 1996‐2008.

The diversity associated with geography and product complexity creates demands for a more flexible organization that can provide a more complete offering portfolio across national boundaries and still handle the demands of local organizations. In addition to internal organizational contingencies, the key factors and driving forces for the development of KAM programs are the marketing and purchasing strategies that buyer and seller firms perceive and encounter.

The data are limited to one corporation and some of its key customers in different industries. Although the internal and construct validity of the findings are strong, the external validity cannot be assessed precisely.

The 12‐year study brings valuable insights to the development of KAM programs in multinational corporations and addresses coordination issues related to geographical and product complexity.

This study aims to address how and why do formal key account management (KAM) programmes hinder effective KAM management, and how can the problems of formalization in KAM be overcome. Recent empirical studies have reported an unexpected negative relationship between KAM formalization and performance.

An 18-month (340 days) ethnographic investigation was undertaken in the UK-based subsidiary of a major US sports goods manufacturer. This ethnographic evidence was triangulated with 113 in-depth interviews.

This study identifies how and why managerial reflexivity allows a more effectively combining of formal and post-bureaucratic KAM practices. While formal KAM programmes provide a means to initiate, implement and control KAM, they have an unintended consequence of increasing organizational bureaucracy, which may in the long-run hinder the KAM effectiveness. Heightened reflexivity, including “wayfinding”, is identified as a means to overcome many of these challenges, allowing for reflexively combining formal with post-bureaucratic KAM practices.

The thesis of this paper starts a new line of reflexive KAM research, which draws theoretical influences from the post-bureaucratic turn in management studies.

This study seeks to increase KAM implementation success rates and long-term effectiveness of KAM by conceptualizing the new possibilities offered by reflexive KAM. This study demonstrates how reflexive skills (conceptualized as “KAM wayfinding”) can be deployed during KAM implementation and for its continual improvement. Further, the study identifies how KAM programmes can be used to train organizational learning regarding KAM. Furthermore, this study identifies how and why post-bureaucratic KAM can offer additional benefits after an organization has learned key KAM capabilities.

A new line of enquiry is identified: the reflexive-turn in KAM. This theoretical position allows us to identify existing weakness in the extant KAM literature, and to show a practical means to improve the effectiveness of KAM. This concerns, in particular, the importance of managerial reflexivity and KAM wayfinding as a means to balance the strengths and weaknesses of formal and post-bureaucratic KAM.

This article aims to introduce the service function concept, as well as why and how it can be a useful concept for addressing service management challenges in industrial firms.

Two in‐depth case studies of global industrial firms enabled a thorough understanding of the roles of the service function entities and interdependencies between them.

Although the service organization is most likely the key entity, it is only one part of the service function; other organizational entities are to be seen as part‐time service functions.

A finer‐grained conceptualization would enable a better understanding of the front‐ and back‐office entities involved in the service processes.

The concept can be useful when communicating the importance of services and the inter‐relatedness between the service organization and other parts of the firm, which generates a better internal understanding of the service processes. The alignment between service offering and organization can be elaborated by mapping where service development, sales, and production take place, what the ideal configuration would be, and the roles played by different parts of the service function.

The service function is a novel concept and is particularly relevant for industrial firms that offer services. It highlights the fact that it is erroneous to equate services with the activities of the service organization. Instead, a more holistic approach to the management of service offerings is needed.

Effective customer‐specific knowledge transfer is the cornerstone of customer value creation in professional service organizations. In order to formulate a coherent service offering across different expertise areas, it is crucial to share customer‐specific knowledge between professionals, business functions and units. The purpose of this study is to offer insights into the role of key account management (KAM) systems in facilitating this process.

The work is based on an explorative case study in which the implementation of the KAM system in two consulting and training companies was investigated. Comparison of the two cases in terms of KAM design and success in knowledge transfer enabled conclusions to be drawn about the role of KAM as a knowledge carrier and a “linking pin” in a loosely coupled organization.

Organizational fragmentation and insufficient communication channels among experts and subgroups of professional organizations cause problems in relation to knowledge transfer. This also makes it more difficult to combine expertise and to create innovative service concepts for customers. A KAM system, if managed effectively, provides a powerful tool for counteracting these problems. It functions as a linking pin in a loosely coupled organization, helping to maintain customer‐specific knowledge transfer and continuity in customer relationships.

Very little research has been conducted on customer‐specific knowledge transfer in professional service organizations in spite of its central role in the creation of customer value. This study is unique in offering empirical evidence of the role of KAM systems in facilitating knowledge transfer. In the future, it would be interesting to study the role of different organizational conditions and practices, including organizational structures, the use of technological knowledge tools and cooperative working methods. The effectiveness of KAM systems in terms of financial performance and the creation of value for clients also deserve more research attention.

The purpose of this paper is to identify what managerial implications research related to inter-organizational interfaces has been produced in marketing. For this aim, the authors focus on a specific concept implemented in many firms that operate on business-to-business markets, which is key account management (KAM).

The authors used the Ebsco Database entering “account management” as a key word in the title row. The search provided 51 papers to which the authors added four MSI reports written by Moriarty and Shapiro between 1980 and 1984. The authors then identified such keywords as “managers”, “practitioners”, “marketers”, “managerial”, “business”, and their variations as well as normative words such as “should”, “must”, etc. in order to identify managerial implications.

Four main findings are provided: a clear managerial purpose is affirmed by KAM academic works whether as a central “purpose” of the works or as “implications”; these managerial implications may display different forms (dimensions to be considered, consequences to anticipate, advices); though the managerial scope of KAM works is clearly visible, the sophistication of managerial recommendations remains … limited; the identification of who is exactly “the manager” targeted by the implications remains vague.

The authors discuss the notion of managerial relevance of academic research.

The authors explore sources for practices (whether they are the ones of scholars or managers) that could help “spelling out more effectively the managerial implications.

To the knowledge this is the first work that reviews so precisely how academic articles address to the managerial audience on a precise issue. Furthermore, the authors believe that KAM is an interesting and appropriate field for such a review because it is widely implemented on business markets.

The new audit regulation for disclosure of key audit matters (KAMs) in financial reporting has been introduced in both developed and developing countries. This study investigates the influence of three distinctive sets of variables, namely industry features, firm characteristics and auditor attributes, on the extent, pattern and level of disclosure of KAMs by companies listed in Bangladesh, an emerging economy.

The study uses qualitative and quantitative research approaches to investigate the pattern of disclosure of KAMs and their determinants. With a sample of 447 firm-year observations from companies listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange over 2018–2020, the study reveals industry-level, firm-level and auditor-specific characteristics that affect KAMs' communication in the new audit reporting model.

The findings suggest that significant differences exist between firms in the number and types of KAMs reported and the extent of their disclosure. The study findings also observed variations both within and across different industry sectors. Highly regulated firms disclose a greater number of KAMs, while environmentally sensitive firms are found to provide a greater detail of the issues presented as KAMs. Further, both firm size and age positively impact the number of KAMs disclosed and the extent of the disclosure provided. Big-4-affiliated auditors do not issue a significantly higher number of KAMs but deliver extensive details to their KAMs description, compared to non-Big-4 auditors. In addition, while auditors, in general, tend to issue boilerplate KAMs, Big-4 associates are found to disclose more new KAMs. However, audit fees and auditor rotation do not influence KAMs disclosure.

This study is based on two years of publicly available data. However, future studies could consider in-depth interviews to explore the motivation behind KAMs' disclosure in Bangladesh and other developing countries with similar cultural and contextual values.

These findings have substantial policy considerations for improving firms' audit quality and, thus, their financial reporting quality, with implications for national and international standard-setters, regulators and other stakeholders.

This study is one of the earliest endeavours to investigate KAMs in a context of an emerging country, such as Bangladesh, which adopted KAMs' disclosure in 2018.

The objective of this study is to present novel evidence regarding the impact of the Key Audit Matters (KAM) disclosure requirements of International Standard on Auditing – 701 (ISA) on the auditing profession concerning reimbursement costs in underdeveloped nations, Jordan.

A year-industry fixed-effects OLS regression model has been employed to test the developed hypotheses. The regression analysis of the period from 2005 to 2022 tests the presence of KAM disclosures in Jordanian finance business, while the regression analysis of the period from 2017 to 2022 tests the actual impact of KAM disclosure following the first implementation of ISA-701 in Jordan.

The analysis has verified that the presence and the proportions of KAM disclosures outlined in ISA-701 resulted to significant auditing compensatory expenses. The findings confirmed that KAM disclosures increase auditor workload, responsibility, complexity, and risk, consequently resulting in higher reimbursement expenses.

The findings of this study have the potential to serve as a basis for the development of a novel financial regulatory legislation or a regulated framework for disclosing significant occurrences. This paper provides new empirical evidence to standard-setters and policymakers regarding the requirement of ISA-701 for external auditors to disclose KAM. This study is advantageous for stakeholders, regulatory agencies, standard-setters, and audit report readers who are interested in KAM disclosures and the implementation of ISA-701. The results could inspire the academic community to obtain fresh data from emerging markets to ascertain the impact of KAM disclosure on audit practices.

To the author's knowledge, this study is one of the few empirical investigations into the impact of current additional disclosure rules on the audit profession concerning reimbursement costs. It provides preliminary evidence linking ISA regulations to corporate productivity in Jordan, a developing nation. Little is known about how developing nation auditors react to KAM disclosures' role in stakeholder protection and how their expanded reporting obligations influence them. This study examines audit behaviour in a weak legal setting, unlike most prior studies, which have been done in highly regulated systems.

This study aims to identify the organizational antecedents of intra‐organizational customer knowledge dissemination in the context of key account management (KAM).

The data were collected from large industrial companies in Finland by means of a structured survey. Linear hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The findings of the study show that esprit de corps among employees and the formalization of key account management facilitate customer knowledge dissemination in industrial key account organizations. Moreover, the findings show that the intra‐organizational dissemination of customer knowledge is positively related to the supplier's KAM performance and dissemination fully mediates the relationship between esprit de corps and KAM performance.

The study contributes to research on key account management in providing quantitative empirical evidence about the antecedents and consequences of the intra‐organizational dissemination of key account‐related knowledge.

Building on previous research on customer knowledge management, market orientation and key account management, the study identifies customer‐specific knowledge dissemination as an intra‐organizational determinant of the successful management of industrial key account relationships.

This article aims to build on existing literature on value and proposes new perspectives and facets of relational value in key account management (KAM).

Building on traditional value perspectives, value in KAM is conceptually deconstructed and linked with strategic value approaches.

The article finds that a multifaceted key account value perspective includes three different types of value: exchange value, proprietary value, and relational value. Depending on the type of value constellation within a KAM relationship, a number of distinct key account value strategies are presented and discussed.

The article provides an innovative concept of value in strategically important business‐to‐business relationships. Based on this, several strategic implications regarding the management of value are derived which enable further empirical research and a more nuanced managerial approach towards KAM.