Institutionalizing Global Account Management Programs: Drivers and Performance Outcomes

For firms competing in high velocity business markets, global account management (GAM)-that is, a supplier's program to centrally leverage its value creation and appropriation worldwide with its strategic customers-is an important matter. When they attempt to implement GAM, firms often face significant challenges in bringing about sustainable change and embedding GAM programs. Many GAM programs run into severe and costly difficulties, ranging from (multiple) relaunches to termination. Adopting a capabilities perspective, we develop through multiyear case study research a model that conceptualizes a firm's global change capability as a key determinant of GAM implementation success. Specifically, we propose that higher levels of a firm's global change capability are associated with a higher degree of GAM program institutionalization, and that higher levels of GAM program institutionalization are associated with a greater degree of GAM program effectiveness and efficiency. We then test this model in a cross-industry survey of 154 multinational firms that have implemented GAM. The results support the conceptualization of a firm's global change capability (i.e., strategic alignment, top management engagement, reward alignment, resource securing, and conflict management) as a meta-capability that embeds GAM and increases program effectiveness and efficiency.