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Strategic Enablement in Business Markets

Introduction

Special issue of Industrial Marketing Management; Deadline 15 Nov 2019

INDUSTRIAL MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Call for Papers

Strategic Enablement in Business Markets

Deadline for submission: November 15th 2019

Industrial Marketing Management announces the call for papers for a special issue on “Strategic Enablement in Business Markets”

Overview and Purpose of the special issue

In today’s business markets, developing and maintaining relationships with business partners is a high-impact strategy for sustainable growth as successful partnerships provide access to new customers and markets and hence, new business opportunities. Consequently, manufacturers and suppliers need to find ways to ensure up-to-date knowledge and quality of service provided by their distributors and re-sellers in the channel. This has led to a strong focus on enabling business partners. Up- and cross-skilling is now seen as very necessary to achieve and retain a strong market position as company success seems to depend increasingly on the capabilities of their business partners. As Kathleen Schneider, Exec. Director of Global Channel Marketing and Programs for Dell, has stated “We believe that if we have the best trained and most enabled partners, not only will it help them and make them happier they’re our partners, but it also will help them be better partners to us and sell more effectively. We’ve conducted research that has proven… their businesses are stronger and they’re just more profitable.”

Many firms have deployed online learning management systems that, in addition to online learning modules and courses, offer forums and virtual meeting rooms for knowledge exchange, collaborative learning opportunities, social networking and reputation mechanisms to drive peer engagement. For example, IBM’s “Know Your IBM” program and Partner World University as well as Lenovo’s Expert Achievers Program (LEAP) host thousands of online learning modules for their business partners, related to critical sales and technical skills, most of which form part of certification curricula. Beyond the IT space, Celebrity Cruises, Grohe and CAT financial are just a few examples of companies that have embarked on an enablement strategy that focuses on earning by learning to sustain relationships with their business partners.

At the same time, however, strategic enablement initiatives in business markets are under pressure. Market surveys have shown that some suffer from low participation rates and insufficient business partner engagement and it has been suggested that it is paramount to gain insight in how to motivate business partners to start reaping the benefits of self-directed learning. It is unclear what incentive structures work best to sustain learner motivation. Moreover, as many global enablement programs are rolled out across cultures there are many issues related to the specific context and the role of learning. Also, as people have gotten used to social media platforms and messaging apps in their daily work- and private lives more insights are needed into how these technologies can be deployed within enablement programs. Online enablement programs are an eco-system in which lots of data is available for optimizing learning opportunities. Yet, little is known about the role of analytics needed to unlock potentially valuable insights present in this Big Data.

In order to address these pertinent managerial concerns and to stimulate the development of an agenda that can guide research in this exiting area of study in business markets, we call for marketing researchers and scholars from adjacent academic domains to focus on substantive issues related to strategic enablement. With this IMM special issue/section, it is our aim to stimulate contributions from a wide range of scholarship bases, covering different theoretical perspectives and using different methodologies and approaches to tackle the problems identified. Potential topics include, but are certainly not limited to:

  1. Assessing the importance and impact of technologies on the learner experience (e.g., the use of AR/VR, dynamic learning tools, AI-directed learning and collaborative learning tools).
  2. Advancing our knowledge of the effectiveness of learning content across different channels and platforms.
  3. Measuring the ROI of partner enablement programs
  4. Using strategic enablement as marketing strategy viz a viz traditional collateral
  5. Assessing cross-cultural aspects of enablement
  6. Exploring the relationship between enablement and social capital
  7. Studying the role of strategic enablement in NPD projects
  8. Developing relevant and predictive learner and learning analytics with Big Data
  9. Exploring data driven learning assessment
  10. Making sense of enablement dashboards and dynamic learning roadmaps
  11. Understanding the role of learner engagement in relation to enablement
  12. Identifying the effectiveness of different types of enabling content (e.g., service vs. sales content)
  13. Tracking the impact of learning vs. performance orientation in relation to strategic enablement effectiveness
  14. Assessing the segmentation and and personalization of learning
  15. Identifying ethical issues of strategic enablement

We will give preference to empirical papers—both qualitative and quantitative—although theoretical papers that examine fundamental issues in, or offer comprehensive frameworks of, ‘interfirm networks and innovation’ also are welcomed. As Industrial Marketing Management is widely read by an academic and business audience, all submissions should include implications for practitioners.

Preparation and submission of paper and review process

Papers submitted must not have been published, accepted for publication, or presently be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submissions should be about 6,000-8,000 words in length. Copies should be uploaded on Industrial Marketing Management’s homepage through the EVISE system. You need to upload your paper using the dropdown box for the special issue on “Interfirm Networks and Innovation”. For guidelines, visit

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Papers not complying with the notes for contributors (cf. homepage) or poorly written will be desk rejected. Suitable papers will be subjected to a double-blind review; hence, authors must not identify themselves in the body of their paper. (Please do not submit a Word file with “track changes” active or a PDF file.)

Please address all questions to the guest editors:

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