Dynamic Capabilities in Customer Relationship Management
Summary
Dynamic capabilities in customer relationship management (CRM) refer to the firm’s systemic ability to sense shifts in customer needs, seize emerging opportunities through adaptive processes and transform organisational routines and resources to sustain competitive advantage. Rooted in strategic management theory, this perspective emphasises the continual reconfiguration of people, data and technology to support customer-centric innovation. In practice, dynamic CRM capabilities enable firms to integrate real-time analytics, artificial intelligence and digital touchpoints to personalise engagement, anticipate demand and co-create value. By fostering agility in sensing market signals, seizing new service models and transforming legacy systems, organisations can maintain resilience in an era of rapid technological change and volatile customer expectations. The interplay of culture, leadership intent and absorptive capacity underpins successful deployment, ensuring that CRM evolves in concert with broader strategic objectives.
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Dynamic Capabilities in Customer Relationship Management publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in dynamic capabilities in customer relationship management across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Dynamic capabilities: Organisational routines for integrating, building and reconfiguring internal and external competences in response to change.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Strategic approach, processes and technologies used to manage interactions and foster relationships with customers.
Artificial Intelligence (AI): Computational methods that enable machines to perform tasks requiring human-like perception, reasoning or learning.
Absorptive capacity: Firm’s ability to recognise valuable external knowledge, assimilate it and apply it to commercial ends.
System fit: Degree to which a technological solution aligns with an organisation’s existing processes, structures and strategic objectives.
Technology turbulence: Rate and unpredictability of technological change in an organisation’s environment.
Sensing capability: Capacity to identify and assess shifts in customer behaviour, market trends and emerging opportunities.
Seizing capability: Capacity to mobilise resources and design offerings in response to sensed opportunities.
Transforming capability: Capacity to reconfigure organisational assets, structures and business models to maintain strategic alignment.
References
- Assessing the AI-CRM technology capability for sustaining family businesses in times of crisis: the moderating role of strategic intent. Journal of Family Business Management (2022).
- Artificial intelligence in customer relationship management: literature review and future research directions. Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing (2022).
- Assessing the Implementation of AI Integrated CRM System for B2C Relationship Management: Integrating Contingency Theory and Dynamic Capability View Theory. Information Systems Frontiers (2022).
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