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Paper info: Knowledge Transfer Through Key Account Management Systems In Expert Organizations

Title


Knowledge Transfer Through Key Account Management Systems In Expert Organizations

Authors


Niina Hanttu and Satu Natti

Place of Publication


The paper was published at the 19th IMP-conference in Lugano, Switzerland in 2003.

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Abstract


The purpose of this paper is to offer a framework for the role of key account management system in knowledge transfer, especially in the context of an expert organisation. Expert organisations constitute an interesting focus of analysis, while loosely coupled characteristics of that specific context might inhibit knowledge sharing. From our point of view, key account management provides a powerful tool for compensating such inhibitors. Within this framework, the phenomenon of knowledge transfer in the loosely coupled context is described mainly from the point of view of key account managers and KAM teams, and the role of this system as a ?junction? of knowledge and information flows is emphasised. In our opinion, these views related to knowledge transfer in a loosely coupled system expert organisations and their effects on customer-relationship management have not been adequately studied in terms of the meaningfulness of expert work in today's business life.The case material consists of a pilot study, and the empirical data was gathered through personal interviews in a business service firm and its customers. The first chapters define the loosely coupled system, knowledge transfer and key account management as concepts in order to create a theoretical basis for the following empirical analysis.