Global Account Management in Multinational Corporations: Theory and Evidence
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Managementin
Account
Multinational
Theory
Corporations: Evidence
and
Julian Birkinshaw*
LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL
Omar Toulan**
UNIVERSITY MCGILL
David Arnold***
HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL This paper uses two theoretical perspectives, information processing and resource dependency, to examine global account management (the co-ordination of activities involved in serving a single customer in multiple countries). It is hypothesized that global account management structures allow the multinational corporation (MNC) to increase its information processing
capacity as well as its bargaining power vis-a-vis the global customer. Using data on 106 global accounts in 16 MNCs, we find support for both perspectives individually. Furthermore, evidence is presented for an interaction effect in which the effectiveness of structures for increasing information processing is conditional upon the presence of high customer dependence.
he coordinationof customerman- the globalizationof markets.Yip and agementacrossnationalboundaries, Madsen (1996), describing global accommonlyreferredto as global account count managementas "thenew frontier management,has emergedas one of the in relationship marketing,"identified most prevalentcorporateresponses to this organizationalformas a vital plat*Julian Birkinshaw is Associate Professor of Strategic and International Management at the London Business School. He is the author of Entrepreneurship in the Global Firm, 2000. **Omar Toulan is Assistant Professor of Strategy and Organization at McGill University. His research focuses on the strategic management of firms in developed and developing countries.
***DavidArnold is Assistant Professorof Marketingat HarvardBusiness School. His research focuses on international marketing organization, branding, and marketing in emerging markets. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Academy of Management Conference, Toronto, 2000. The research was supported by the MarketingScience Institute. JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONALBUSINESSSTUDIES, 32, 2 (SECONDQUARTER2001):
231-248
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GLOBALACCOUNT MANAGEMENTIN MULTINATIONALS
form for the successful implementation of a numberof globalization strategies.In a similar vein, the journal of the National Account Management Association, the major management association in its field, identified a sound global account managementprogramas a "criticalcompetitive weapon" (Napolitano 1998), and argued that global account management "clearly represents the new frontier in strategic account management." While global account management is clearly an important strategic issue for many MNCs, it has so far attractedrelatively little research interest in the field of International Business. The purpose of this paper, accordingly, is to offer some insights into how global account management works in MNCs, and to develop and test propositions regardingits effecti
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