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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 volume of Progress in International Business Research comprises of a selection of 12 competitive papers from the 34th EIBA (European International Business Academy) annual conference, which was held in Tallinn, Estonia in December 2008 with the theme “International Business and the Catching-up Economies: Challenges and Opportunities”. It addresses two main issues – (1) the internationalization process and (2) the role of knowledge and innovation for internationalization – that are important in the current economic slowdown both for catching-up and for other economies, scholars, and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the articles presented in the Special Issue on the topic of “Marketing and flexibility”, and to discuss key issues associated with major debates relating to flexibility in order to position the articles within a wider context and highlight some key issues for further research.

Themes in prior research relating to “Marketing and flexibility” are documented and the growth of research interest into strategic flexibility is tabulated. The contributions of each article are briefly discussed.

There has been a steady growth of research interest into flexibility. To provide an example of this growth, the increase in the number of articles published on the topic of strategic flexibility in scholarly journals is highlighted over a 20‐year period. Key issues in prior research such as alternative definitions and the different postulated relationships between market orientation and strategic flexibility are revealed, as are issues for future research.

Key issues relating to research into flexibility for marketing scholars are revealed.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on entrepreneurial orientation (EO) with a focus on the interplay between the individual and firm level for embedding EO pervasively within organisations.

Comprising 356 individual employees from five companies collected from June to September 2015, this investigation uses structural equation modelling.

The results show significant indirect effects from individuals’ EO on firm’s performance, mediated by both individuals’ performance and firm’s EO.

While the construct of EO is strengthened with a multi-level approach, the authors also stress the organisational homogeneity of EO.

Consequently, the EO instrument can be used as a strategic tool to evaluate an individual’s orientation towards entrepreneurship to facilitate firm performance.

Finally, the EO instrument can be used as a strategic tool to evaluate an individual’s orientation towards entrepreneurship to facilitate firm performance.