The role of academics and analysts in misleading businesses — The case of customer relationship management

In this paper, the authors investigate how academics and analysts assess companies and, in so doing, may mislead managers in the companies themselves, as well as their stakeholders — shareholders, employees, business partners, governments and, of course, customers. They conclude that while academics and analysts can have a powerful positive role in stimulating change to the benefit of stakeholders, they can also have a powerful negative role, by encouraging poor and over-risky investment and strategies. The data from this paper come from the work of QCi Ltd in assessing customer management performance over the last few years. QCi is therefore itself an analyst and not immune to these charges, though the authors will show how they have tried to avoid falling prey to the enormous temptations. Parts of this paper were originally published in Chapter 2 of the third QCi report on the state of play in customer management.