Unleashing inter-organizational capabilities in global supplier-buyer relationships for competitive advantage

Global account management (GAM) has become a critical issue for multinationals competing in a dynamic global market environment. Approaching GAM from a dynamic capability perspective, we introduce a framework of intra- and inter-organizational capabilities through which we recognize that a supplier's dynamic GAM capability extends beyond operational sales routines to customer-linked strategic, organizational, and functional dimensions. Such a dynamic GAM capability reconfigures, integrates, and replicates the firms' skills, resources, and competences to form inter-organizational value co-creation capabilities, which in turn determine joint profit performance and competitive advantage. We develop propositions for each construct on the basis of results from a five-year GAM research consortium. The framework can serve as a base for further empirical research that investigates the implications of a dynamic capability approach to GAM. From a practical viewpoint, the framework underlines the importance of attributing strategic weight to GAM and acknowledging it as a collaborative, value-generating supplier-buyer process that can yield superior dyadic outcomes that neither firm could generate by itself.