Corporate marketing leaders: the key attributes

Abstract

Purpose

In their boundary‐spanning role, marketing managers are often charged with managing cross‐functional teams and collaborative work groups. Although this interfunctional coordination is key to organizational performance many marketing managers run into resistance owing to leadership styles and stereotypes held about other functional departments. The aim of this paper is to understand the leadership qualities important to the marketing function and compare them to those found important in other business functions.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from two multinational organizations. Over 1,000 employees from six functional departments (engineering, information technology, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and research and development rated the importance of 45 leadership attributes to high‐performing leadership in their particular business function.

Findings

A total of nine dimensions of leadership are uncovered and four of them are deemed more important in marketing compared to some of the other business functions. The four dimensions are charisma, vision, creative, and challenges the process.

Research limitations/implications

Future work might consider examining the perceptions of leadership in a business‐to‐consumer company compared with that of a business‐to‐business company. It might be interesting to look at the strategy of an organization and then determine how the perceptions of leadership might compare to the current findings.

Practical implications

Marketing managers charged with leading cross‐functional teams might consider the aspects of leadership that resonate with different functional areas, A supportive and visionary leader is equally important to all of the functional areas but employees might respond differently to a leader exuding charisma or challenging the traditional ways of doing things.

Originality/value

This paper serves as a first step in understanding marketing leadership and could also serve as a stepping stone to our understanding of what makes marketing managers successful leaders. The information identified here can help marketing managers fulfill their boundary spanning roles and manage their cross‐functional teams more effectively.

Citation

Scott, C.J. (2013), "Corporate marketing leaders: the key attributes", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 34 No. 1, pp. 41-46. https://doi.org/10.1108/02756661311301774