Search results

The purpose of this paper is to identify groups of companies using different configurations of orientations, and compare the groups for differences in their performance and organizational learning capability. The paper proposes that organizational learning capability enables firms to utilize several strategic orientations simultaneously.

A sample of 164 Finnish software companies is clustered on the basis of their mix of customer (CO), technology (TO) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO). After validating the clusters, an analysis of variance is performed to detect differences in measures of performance and learning capability.

The paper provides evidence that firms combining several strategic orientations perform better than those focusing solely on customer orientation. The paper finds support for a proposal that software companies can be divided into three groups featuring different configurations of customer, technology and entrepreneurial orientation. The groups are termed: servants (high CO, low TO and low EO), players (intermediate levels of CO, TO and EO) and integrators (high levels of CO, TO and EO). Furthermore, the paper shows that these groups demonstrate differences in their organizational learning capability and performance.

The paper refers to an empirical study of software companies in Finland. Further research in other countries and industry settings is needed to confirm and extend the results.

The identification of a successful mix of strategic orientations is a major challenge to management. The results urge software company managers to develop a culture that nurtures organizational learning. The paper suggests that managers should utilize aspects from several strategic orientations and create an appropriate mix of orientations that enables adaptation to dynamic business environments.

The paper provides insights into viable combinations of strategic orientations in the software industry and provides evidence for the differences in learning and performance for software company groups classified on the basis of their mix of orientations.

The purpose of this paper is to advance a theoretical framework that incorporates the relationship between market challenge and learning and customer orientations, and the influence of these orientations on innovativeness in an international joint venture (IJV) context.

The authors estimate a structural equation model utilizing survey data collected from 199 IJVs in the Republic of Korea.

The authors found that while market challenge does not influence learning orientation in IJVs, it does have a significant positive influence on customer orientation. Further, the authors’ findings support that both learning orientation and customer orientation have positive impacts on IJV innovativeness. Another interesting finding shows that the impact of learning orientation on IJV innovativeness is significant only when IJVs have high levels of interaction with parent firms. The study also reveals that having a strong learning orientation amplifies the impact of customer orientation on innovativeness in IJVs.

Despite increased interest in IJVs, there has been relatively little work linking IJV innovativeness with learning and customer orientations. The study contributes to recent streams of research that seek to understand the role of these orientations in IJV innovativeness.

Customer orientation of service employees relates to customer satisfaction and loyalty, sales growth and business performance. Drawing from conservation of resources (COR) theory, the aim of this study was to test the interactive effects of service employees' role clarity and learning goal orientation on customer orientation. Specifically, it was hypothesized that even under conditions of low role clarity, service employees with high learning goal orientation would maintain a high level of customer orientation.

Participants were 323 employees of 4- and 5-star hotels in Singapore. Using questionnaires, they reported their role clarity, learning goal orientation and customer orientation. For hypothesis testing, moderated regression analysis was performed.

Role clarity and learning goal orientation were significantly related to customer orientation, and in support of the hypothesis, the interaction effect of role clarity and learning goal orientation was also significant. With high role clarity, all employees showed high customer orientation. But with low role clarity, only employees with high learning goal orientation demonstrated high customer orientation.

The recommendations from this study are to include learning goal orientation as a selection criterion for service employees and to clearly define the roles of existing service employees, especially for those with low learning goal orientation.

The originality and value of this study lies in highlighting the importance of learning goal orientation especially under conditions of low role clarity.

This study aims to examine the direct and moderating effects of generative learning on customer performance.

The authors test the relationships between customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities, generative learning, customer performance, and financial performance with a cross industry survey of CEOs and senior marketing executives from 199 firms. Partial least squares are used to estimate the parameters of the resulting model.

The results reveal that generative learning affects customer performance directly. Moreover, the interaction of CRM capabilities and generative learning contributes to customer performance. This finding suggests that firms need a well-developed generative learning orientation to fully benefit from translating new insights resulting from CRM capabilities into establishing, maintaining, and enhancing long-term associations with customers, and vice versa.

The main limitations are those that typically apply to cross-sectional surveys. Although several steps were taken to reduce the concern of key informant bias and common method variance, dependent and independent variables were collected from the same source at a single moment in time.

Ceteris paribus, an increase of generative learning orientation by one unit (seven-point scale) can command an increase of up to 7 percent of the average customer performance due to its direct and interaction effect. Because even small changes in customer performance have a strong impact on financial performance, this finding indicates a remarkable and substantial result for managers.

Though previous research provides evidence of the adaptive learning consequences of CRM, a review of the literature reveals a lack of studies that analyze the importance of generative learning orientation for successful CRM.

This study seeks to investigate the impact that learning orientation, internal and external customer orientation have on quality of care delivered to patients. Additionally, given the differences between managerial and non‐managerial employees regarding organizational value perception and focus on the needs of internal customers and patients, the study aims to examine potential variations in these relationships.

The study took place in ten out of 31 public hospitals operating in the five largest districts in continental Greece. Hospitals were chosen on a random basis. Out of 800 questionnaires that were personally administered, 499 usable responses were gathered.

The extent to which employees create and use knowledge and focus on satisfying the needs of both internal customers and patients is indicative of the quality of care provided. In addition, only managerial employees believe that learning orientation reinforces quality of care.

The fact that employees rated quality of care delivered to patients and that most employees had extended tenure should be taken into consideration when interpreting these findings.

Top management needs to create a strong and clear culture that emphasizes learning, as well as internal customer and patient orientation, and infuse them among all organizational members. Moreover, human resource management policies should be aligned to meeting or exceeding patients' requests and expectations.

The paper enhances existing knowledge with regard to the antecedents of offering medical care of high quality.

The creativity of retail employees seems to be of the utmost importance for ensuring the performance of organizations in service settings. This paper contributes to the existing theory by investigating the direct and indirect effects of goal orientations on the creativity and performance of retail employees. The authors propose a framework depicting the relationships between goal orientations and employee creativity and performance, including the intervening effects of self-efficacy and customer orientation.

The study was conducted with retail frontline employees of a large retail bank in Portugal. The sample consists of 267 valid responses. Structural equations are used by applying the maximum likelihood method to test the conceptual framework.

Results are broadly supportive of the hypotheses. Learning orientation is, directly and indirectly, related to creativity, but only indirectly to performance. As to performance orientation, it is indirectly related to creativity through self-efficacy and customer orientation, and directly as well as indirectly, to performance. The authors investigate the extent to which the effects of goal orientations on creativity and performance are mediated by self-regulatory mechanisms, namely self-efficacy, and customer orientation.

The results recognize that learning and performance goals are neither mutually exclusive nor contradictory, which collide with past empirical evidence showing that learning goals are generally associated with more favorable outcomes and performance goals with more negative or equivocal ones. These outcomes underscore the need and relevance for managers to foster both goal orientations to promote the creativity and performance of retail employees, representing a particularly salient issue in retail businesses characterized by significant interpersonal interactions.

This study seeks to investigate causal relationships between sales management programs designed to build customer relationships by solving customer problems and selling firm performance.

Hypotheses were developed and supported based on theories developed from the market orientation and sales management literature. Using survey results from sales managers and reported profitability data, those hypotheses were tested using multiple regression.

Results indicate that consulting‐oriented post‐sales training and consulting‐oriented evaluation are significant influences on salesforce efficiency. Consulting‐oriented evaluation is a significant influence on customer retention. The strongest influences on profit growth are initial sales training and post‐sales training learning, but a composite variable of all elements of the consulting‐oriented sales management program is a significant influence on profit growth.

The sampling frame of this study was limited to medium to large industrial manufacturing firms; therefore any conclusions drawn from this study cannot be generalized beyond these types of firms. Future consulting‐oriented sales management research should expand the types of firms studied. Future research should also measure the relationships between consulting‐oriented sales management programs, firm market and learning orientation, adaptive selling, and salesperson customer orientation.

In industries where relationship building and partnering are considered mutually beneficial and important by buyers and sellers there should be greater emphasis on: listening skills, diagnostic skills, and problem solving skills in sales training; sharing effective strategies to build customer relationships and sharing of effective customer problem‐solving strategies in post‐sales training learning; measuring customer cost savings and obtaining customer satisfaction feedback in evaluation systems; and compensating salespeople for customer retention, positive customer feedback, and increased sales from current customers.

This study fills a gap in the literature for firm level research on the consequences of sales management programs, particularly programs that encourage sales consulting. This study makes a contribution to the literature by determining whether industry conditions encourage those programs or moderate their relationship to performance.

The purpose of the study is twofold: first, it is to develop each aspect of maṣlaḥah ḍarūriyah (essential needs), i.e. dīn (faith/religion), nafs (soul), ʿaql (intellect), naṣl (descendants) and mal (wealth), into various aspects of organisational essential needs; second, it is to formulate maṣlaḥah-based performance measurement.

The research is an exploratory study that uses a two-stage design: defining the research question and developing the research design. The research question is how each element of maṣlaḥah ḍarūriyah can become an element of organisational essential needs. The research design developed is to formulate maṣlaḥah-based performance measurement.

The study concludes that maṣlaḥah ḍarūriyah could be developed as a basis for identifying organisational essential needs. The five elements of maṣlaḥah ḍarūriyah are developed into the following organisational essential needs: worship orientation, internal process orientation, talent orientation, learning orientation, customer orientation and wealth orientation. Maṣlaḥah-based performance measurement uses five variables: strategic objective, measure, formula, target and strategic initiatives and applies the modified plan – do – check – action cycle: performance planning, performance implementation, performance evaluation and performance action.

Organisational essential needs can be developed by Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) into performance measurement. IFIs have six essential needs that can be developed into performance variables. Key performance indicators that can be developed for each need are worship orientation (social responsibility, regulatory compliance and Sharīʿah compliance); internal process orientation (innovation process, digital adaptation and employee satisfaction); talent orientation (career development, talent pool, compensation and benefits); learning orientation (training programme, training evaluation and return on training investment); customer orientation (customer engagement, customer satisfaction, customer survey and promotion programme); wealth orientation (profitability, cost-cutting, share prices, dividends, cost efficiency and financial sustainability).

This paper contributes to new knowledge. The study attempts to discuss the organisational essential needs based on the maṣlaḥah ḍarūriyah concept, while previous studies discussed organisational needs based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In developing performance measurement, organisational performance is measured in a balanced manner. According to the concept of maṣlaḥah, not only financial factors but also worship, internal processes, talents, learning and customers define organisational needs. Thus, organisational needs are considered not only in terms of material factors but also in terms of spiritual (worship) factors.

The aim of this paper is to gain a better understanding of how small technology start‐ups learn about a key customer in the context of B2B relationships, and to propose a model of interfirm learning with customers.

Using a qualitative case‐based approach, the authors immerse themselves in the development of three learning alliances between technology startups and industry leaders, two successes and one failure, to gain an in‐depth understanding of the dynamics involved. Data were collected on both sides of the alliance dyad.

The paper delineates four learning cycles: alliance inception, joint‐learning, specialization and discovery. These learning cycles constitute sequences of increasing understanding, cooperation, and higher order learning between the partners; evolving from an exchange of existing knowledge to the joint development of new knowledge.

This study contributes to an integration of the alliance and marketing literatures by offering empirical evidence of a different type of alliance, namely the reciprocal learning alliance. It also contributes to broadening our understanding of market orientation in inter‐organizational settings. In the context of business‐to‐business relationships, the study has identified four critical dimensions of learning alliance success, and proposed how they could be measured: Learn about customers; Interact with customers; Customer‐specific investments; and Co‐develop breakthrough innovations. Finally, the study demonstrates the significant role played by “committed champions”.

This study aims to explore the role of learning in value co-creation in the context of new technological B2B services. The research objective is approached from the customers' viewpoint, in terms of their motivation to make sacrifices in learning and to embark on value co-creation with a service provider.

This study is based on a qualitative case study. The main source of data is 17 interviews with retailers who tested a new m-advertising service.

The findings show that the customer's motives to make sacrifices, their absorptive capacity and exploitative/explorative learning orientation are important in explaining the role of learning in value co-creation, because perceived value can vary significantly depending on the level of the absorptive capacity of the firm, the orientation towards learning, and the customer's sacrifices in learning.

The study can be of use to providers of new technological business services in showing how to persuade customers to learn to use the service and engage in value co-creation. This is important since the active participation of both actors is required to co-produce the technological B2B service.

The study contributes to the existing value theory by offering new critical insights into the essential role of customer learning in value co-creation. Closely related to this, the study explores customer motivation to make sacrifices in learning and to get involved in value co-creation with service provider, specifically in the context of new technological B2B services. In so doing, this study offers empirically-based insights into value co-creation and thus advances the current understanding of value phenomena.