Journal of Management History Customer relationship management: Barnard's foundations Milorad Novicevic, Hugh Sloan, Allison Duke, Erin Holmes, Jacob Breland, Article information: To cite this document: Milorad Novicevic, Hugh Sloan, Allison Duke, Erin Holmes, Jacob Breland, (2006) "Customer relationship management: Barnard's foundations", Journal of Management History, Vol. 12 Issue: 3, pp.306-318, https:// doi.org/10.1108/17511340610670205 Downloaded by Northumbria University Library At 23:34 01 November 2018 (PT) Permanent link to this document: https://doi.org/10.1108/17511340610670205 Downloaded on: 01 November 2018, At: 23:34 (PT) References: this document contains references to 58 other documents. To copy this document: permissions@ emeraldinsight.com The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 5333 times since 2006* Users who downloaded this article also downloaded: (2003),"Understanding customer relationship management (CRM): People, process and technology", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 9 Iss 5 pp. 672-688 <a href="https:// doi.org/10.1108/14637150310496758">https://doi.org/10.1108/14637150310496758</a> (2003),"Knowledge-enabled customer relationship management: integrating customer relationship management and knowledge management concepts[1]", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 7 Iss 5 pp. 107-123 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/13673270310505421">https:// doi.org/10.1108/13673270310505421</a> Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:462515 [] For Authors If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/ authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.com Emerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 j ournals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services. Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. *Related content and download information correct at time of download.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1751-1348.htm JMH Customer relationship 12,3 management: Barnard’s foundations 306 Milorad Novicevic, Hugh Sloan and Allison Duke University of Mississippi, Mississippi, USA Erin Holmes School of Pharmacy, University of Mississippi, Mississippi, USA, and Downloaded by Northumbria University Library At 23:34 01 November 2018 (PT) Jacob Breland University of Mississippi, Mississippi, USA Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to delve into Barnard’s works to construct foundations of customer relationship management (CRM). Design/methodology/approach – The paper identifies Barnard’s insights on customer participation using a post-analytic method and uses them as inputs to the analysis of current CRM practices. Findings – As an outcome of the analysis, the paper identifies the practices that are likely to lead to more effective participatory behavior of customers. Research limitations/implications – Examining CRM from a historical perspective can open promising avenues for future research. Practical implications – CRM programs should incorporate the practice of customer relations management in order to provide managers with the knowledge base required for appropriate decision making. Originality/value – By placing contemporary discussions of CRM in its seminal historical context, scholars can draw upon a wealth of historical inputs to advance the study of how collaborations with customers can be nurtured effectively. Keywords Management history, Buyer-seller relationships, Industrial relations, Participative management Paper type Conceptual paper Introduction Management researchers have traditionally viewed customers primarily as recipients of firm output that create revenue for the firm (Bateson, 2002; Brief and Bazerman, 2003). In contrast, researchers studying services management have claimed that customers can also be viewed as participants in the firm’s internal processes, and should be managed as valuable human resources of the firm (Bowen and Siehl, 1997; Bowen and Johnston, 1998). Customer participation as the firm’s virtual human resource base involves the “actions and resources supplied by customers for service production and/or delivery” (Rodie and Kleine, 2000, p. 111). When the firm can engage Journal of Management History Vol. 12 No. 3, 2006 its customers to participate proactively as partial contributors of labor, such pp. 306-318 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited involvement may transform value chain activities of the firm (Applebaum, 2001; Bitner 1751-1348 et al. , 1997; Claycomb et al. , 2001). DOI 10.1108/17511340610670205
While the idea of engaging customers in the firm processes was first asserted by Customer Barnard (1938) more than 60 years ago, it has gained particular significance over the relationship last two decades with the advancement in network technologies for customer management relationship management (CRM). CRM has sparked an ongoing theoretical debate in services industry research over the contingencies when customer participation in the service production and delivery increases service-system efficiency (Bowen and 307 Schneider, 1985; Chase and Tansik, 1983; Eiglier and Langeard, 1977; Lovelock and Young, 1979; Mills et al. , 1983). Also, the CRM practice has produced the influx of automatic teller machines (ATMs), self-service gas stations, and self-scanning check-outs in grocery and mass-merchandise stores, which all involve customer participation in the service transaction (Halbesleben and Buckley, 2004). The purpose of this paper is to delve into Barnard’s works to construct foundations Downloaded by Northumbria University Library At 23:34 01 November 2018 (PT) of customer relationship management (CRM) using post-analytic method. First, we explain the post-analytic method and apply it to identify seminal elements of CRM in Barnard’s works. Second, we build customer role configurations on Barnard’s foundations. Third, we illustrate the implications of customer relationship and role management for conceptualization of customer labor relations originally proposed by Barnard. In conclusion, we discuss the enduring relevance of Barnard’s view of the firm as a cooperative system of employees and customers for the emerging conceptualization of communities of practice. A post-hoc approach to Barnard’s works The determination of which specific contributions from Barnard’s works could be instrumental inputs to theorizing about conceptualization of CRM requires prior extraction of Barnard’s relevant ideas that are embedded in the historical material of his works. To perform this extraction, we cannot use a single method as a means of sorting out appropriate inputs solely in relation to this material. Rather, we must turn to the use of appropriate logical reasoning as a philosophical tool that can help us to sort out the historical material toward reconstructing concepts and their meanings from the past (Bevir, 2000a, b). Bevir (1999) argues that the logic of post-analytic philosophy allows us to reflect on the traditions of concepts that we inherit in the light of our current understanding and “thereby alter these traditions with our own reasoning.” In other words, we make sense of the traditional beliefs expressed in the old works/relics “by portraying the new beliefs as responses to the dilemmas confronting the old ones” (Bevir, 1999, p. 263). In this way, we strive to discover “the newness of the past” using our logical reasoning as a grammar of the concepts being explored (Anhkersmit, 2000). Therefore, we employ the post-analytic approach to Barnard’s works to discover, in an intellectually rigorous and philosophically informed way, the historical meaning that Barnard implicitly attributed to CRM. When applying the logic of post-analytic philosophy to Barnard and his works, we should interpret Barnard’s works beyond reading them as a text. Instead, we should focus on Barnard’s expressed beliefs as a tool for discovering what can be attributed to his intentions in his works. The boundary condition for our discovery process is that the two main criteria/norms of the post-analytic approach are to be met: (1) procedural individualism (i.e. narrow focus only on meanings that can be ascribed to Barnard and his readers); and
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