Environmental factors influencing the management of key accounts in an Arab Middle Eastern context

•Inter-organisational relationships are a product of a number of contingency factors.•Convergence of key account practices along the organisational dimension of KAM•Divergence of key account practices along the relational dimension of KAM•The relational dimension is crucial for successful Arab Key Account relationships.

Within the sales and marketing literature, it is recognised that a range of external factors can influence how companies in the business-to-business field manage business relationships within national and across international borders. However, there have been very few studies that explore the influence of the external environment on key account relationships, especially within the context of emerging economies. This study draws on the network approach and contingency theory to identify and highlight the influence of external environmental factors on the management of inter-organisational relationships with key customers in emerging economies in the Arab Middle East region. It is based on an extensive qualitative enquiry that utilises 50 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted in Jordan with endogenous and Western firms. It concludes that key account practices within an Arab context are shaped by a number of contingencies that are embedded in broader institutional contexts and the business environment, which may challenge the adoption of company-wide universal key account management policies across borders.