The Threat from Within

The scholarly article from Management Science explores a paradoxical issue within cross-functional account teams, focusing on how account managers’ transaction-specific investments (TSIs) in customers lead to concern about internal opportunism by their own team specialists. This concern about internal misconduct, referred to as the "threat from within," prompts account managers to engage in internal blocking—restricting specialists' access to customers and information—which ultimately harms overall performance with the customer. The research identifies that the expected duration of the account manager–customer relationship strengthens this concern, while the expected duration of the specialist–customer relationship weakens it. The study concludes that managing cross-functional teams is more complex than traditionally believed, highlighting the need for strategies to mitigate the counterproductive behavior of internal blocking.