Iain A. Davies

The changing role of sales: viewing sales as a strategic, cross‐functional process

Purpose – Although there is substantial practitioner evidence for changes in the role and functioning of sales in the twenty‐first century, there is little academic research charting new directions for the sales function in a business‐to‐business context. This paper aims to report on four case studies that illustrate how sales is changing.Design/methodology/approach – The case studies involve large global companies who were changing their existing sales process to adapt to changing circumstances. The organizations comprised four global industries: construction, power solutions, building technology, and electronics and software.Findings – The results demonstrate that sales is changing in three interrelated aspects: from a function to a process; from an isolated activity to an integrated one; and is becoming strategic rather than operational.Originality/value – The results suggest that changes in the role of sales will affect sales processes and the way that the sales function liaises with other departments.

Corporate Social Responsibility in Small-And Medium-Size Enterprises: Investigating Employee Engagement in Fair Trade Companies

Employee buy-in is a key factor in ensuring small- and medium-size enterprise (SME) engagement with corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this exploratory study, we use participant observation and semi-structured interviews to investigate the way in which three fair trade SMEs utilise human resource management (and selection and socialisation in particular) to create employee engagement in a strong triple bottomline philosophy, while simultaneously coping with resource and size constraints. The conclusions suggest that there is a strong desire for, but tradeoff within these companies between selection of individuals who already identify with the triple bottomline philosophy and individuals with experience and capability to deal with mainstream brand management – two critical employee attributes that appear to be rarely found together. The more important the business experience to the organisation, the more effort the organisation must expend in formalising their socialisation programmes to ensure employee engagement. A key method in doing this is increasing employee knowledge of, and affection for, the target beneficiaries of the CSR programme (increased moral intensity).

Where now for fair trade

This paper critically examines the discourse surrounding fair trade mainstreaming, and discusses the potential avenues for the future of the social movement. The authors have a unique insight into the fair trade market having a combined experience of over 30 years in practice and 15 as fair trade scholars. The paper highlights a number of benefits of mainstreaming, not least the continued growth of the global fair trade market (tipped to top

The diffusion of e-commerce in UK SMEs

7bn in 2012). However, the paper also highlights the negative consequences of mainstreaming on the long-term viability of fair trade as a credible ethical standard.

The Eras and Participants of Fair Trade: An Industry Structure/Stakeholder Perspective on the Growth of the Fair Trade Industry

The concept of the Internet as a cluster of related innovations, along with the staged approach to organisational learning exhibited by SMEs in other domains, suggest that e-commerce is likely to be adopted in a sequence of stages. This exploratory survey, carried out by means of a postal questionnaire with 678 respondents, uses cluster analysis to derive a grouped classification of e-commerce adoption. Four groups of organisations emerge, which we term developers, communicators, promoters and customer lifecycle managers. Through inductive analysis of these groups we are able to suggest that they represent four stages in the adoption of e-commerce. Five factors found to influence this adoption are top management support, management understanding of business benefits, presence of IT skills, availability of consultancy, and prioritisation of e-commerce. In addition to these factors, several other factors influence the value of e-commerce to the enterprise for any given adoption level, notably perceived risk and customer demand. Further research is encouraged to validate and extend the stage model: further stages are hypothesised, for example, termed supply chain managers and virtual value deliverers. Implications for practitioners include the need to include customer demand information and a risk assessment in decisions on adoption, and the importance of building in-house skills as part of the adoption plan.

A Stage Model for Transitioning to Kam

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the increased mass-marketing in the fair trade industry to provide a robust analysis of the industry, participants and growth for use both as a starting-point for researchers in this field and as a case study for readers with an interest in any ethical trading initiative.Design/methodology/approach – Utilizing data from a longitudinal exploratory research project,participant observation from two organizations and in-depth interviews from a total of 15 organizations are combined to build a strong theory grounded in the data.Findings – The paper provides insight into the nature of participants and industry structure in fair trade over time. Four distinct eras are identified which reflect both current literature and the practitioners’ perspective. The four eras can be split into three extant eras – the solidarity era, niche-market era, and mass-market era, and the fourth – the institutionalization era – depicts participants’ beliefs about the future for the industry.Research limitations/implications – The three principal theoretical contributions are the definitionswhich are provided for the different eras of the market’s progression, the view of industry structure and the newly defined participants from both the commodity and under-considered craft markets.Practical implications – Practical contributions are provided since the paper offers a holistic view of the fair trade market, so acting as a starting-point for those new to fair trade.Originality/value – This paper provides deep empirically grounded theory from which fair trade research can grow. It also provides future insights from participants in the industry, advancing current theory.

Consumer motivations for mainstream “ethical” consumption

This paper investigates the under-researched area of key account management (KAM) implementation through a systematic review of the literature, syndications with a panel of industry exemplars, and a survey investigating how organisations implement KAM. Through this we identify a stage model that identifies not only how companies currently transition to KAM in practice, but also suggests how they could improve their chances of success in transitioning to KAM. We demonstrate the fundamental elements of a KAM programme and the extent to which companies feel KAM has met their pre-implementation expectations.

Where's the strategic intent in key account relationships?

Purpose This paper aims to explore why consumers absorb ethical habits into their daily consumption, despite having little interest or understanding of the ethics they are buying into, by looking at the motivation behind mainstream ethical consumption. Design/methodology/approach Fifty in-depth field interviews at point of purchase capture actual ethical consumption behavior, tied with a progressive-laddering interview technique yields over 400 consumption units of analysis. Findings Ethical attitudes, values and rational information processing have limited veracity for mainstream ethical consumption. Habit and constrained choice, as well as self-gratification, peer influence and an interpretivist understanding of what ethics are being purchased provide the primary drivers for consumption. Research limitations/implications Use of qualitative sampling and analysis limits the generalizability of this paper. However, the quantitative representation of data demonstrates the strength with which motivations were perceived to influence consumption choice. Practical implications Ethical brands which focus on explicit altruistic ethical messaging at the expense of hedonistic messaging, or ambiguous pseudo ethics-as-quality messaging, limit their appeal to mainstream consumers. Retailers, however, benefit from the halo effect of ethical brands in store. Social implications The paper highlights the importance of retailer engagement with ethical products as a precursor to normalizing ethical consumption, and the importance of normative messaging in changing habits. Originality/value The paper provides original robust critique of the current field of ethical consumption and an insight into new theoretical themes of urgent general interest to the field.

Barriers to Social Enterprise Growth

Purpose – Over the past ten to 15 years, key account management (KAM) has established itself as an important and growing field of academic study and as a major issue for practitioners. Despite the use of strategic intent in conceptualizing KAM relationship types, the role of strategic intent has not previously been empirically tested. This paper aims to address this issue Design/methodology/approach – This paper reports on inductive research that used a dyadic methodology and difference modelling to examine nine key account relationship dyads involving 18 companies. This is supplemented with 13 semi-structured interviews with key account managers from a further 13 companies, which provides additional depth of understanding of the drivers of KAM relationship type. Findings – The research found a misalignment of strategic intent between supplier and customer, which suggested that strategic intent is unrelated to relationship type. In contrast, key buyer/supplier relationships were differentiated not by the ...

The modern renegotiations of Confucian ethics and implications on ethical consumption in China

This study investigates barriers to social enterprise growth. The research employs qualitative case study data gathered from young social enterprises to examine the interplay between social enterprise and individual, organizational and institutional barriers to growth. We find that social enterprise barriers to growth are based on values differences, business models, and institutional norms. We theorize three strategic responses to overcome barriers to growth: values‐based decision‐making, leveraging social mission, and anchoring.