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The purpose of this paper is to explain the relationship between customer-oriented strategy (COS) and financial performance (FP) of firm, to examine the role of supportive human resource management (HRM) in COS implementation and contribution toward FP of firm. It also examines the mediating role of innovation capability (IC) between COS and FP of firm.

The approach used for this study is quantitative. Data required for testing of hypothesis were gathered from the managers of manufacturing firms of Gujranwala, Pakistan. To conduct the data analysis, structural equation modeling was used.

Findings of this study showed that there is significantly positive relation between COS and FP with the significant positive mediating effects of supportive HRM and IC.

This research has been conducted in manufacturing sector only. So, it is suggested to future researchers to carry out this research in other sectors. Second, this research focused only on IC but there are many other organizational capabilities (OC) that can be used.

This research would be helpful for all firms adopting COS to understand that how to mobilize their HR to accomplish the purpose of strategy. It will enable manufacturing firms to understand and work on IC.

This study is anticipated to add value to the existing literature of strategy process and OC. This study is one of the first to examine IC as mediator between COS and organizational FP so it opens new areas for research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effects of selling experience on the relationship between job satisfaction and sales performance, customer orientation and sales performance, and adaptive selling behaviors and sales performance, taking the context of B2B insurance selling.

Using a sample of 380 business‐to‐business insurance salespersons from an emerging market (India) to validate their model, the authors tested several hypotheses using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results suggest that experience works with customer‐oriented selling in making the more experienced salespersons better performers. It was also found that for less experienced salespersons, the impact of job satisfaction on performance is weaker than for more experienced salespersons. In addition, it was found that more experienced salespersons' performance is better explained using job satisfaction and customer‐oriented selling rather than their adaptive selling behaviors.

The study contributes by explaining the mechanism for the above relationships. The study also contributes to knowledge by showing that more experience may not be always good for sales performance. Since the sample comes from an emerging market, the paper extends the knowledge from developed markets, and by testing in emerging markets.

The managerial implications of this study lie in explaining those situations where experience can make salespersons more productive. The current sales literature on B2B selling contexts falls short of explaining this mechanism in salesperson performance.

This study contributes to knowledge uniquely by extending the body of empirical evidence that suggests that for experience, more is not always better. The study also shows that a more experienced salesperson does not improve his/her performance by adopting adaptive selling strategies. Such adaptive selling strategies are probably more suitable for younger salespersons, given different expectations from them by customers. For experienced salespersons, job satisfaction and customer‐oriented selling are more important than adaptive selling. This study explains the mechanism for the above relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to examine which particular marketing strategies will work best in which particular business environments. It also aims to test a series of propositions that the choice of marketing strategy needs to be carefully considered so that it is appropriate for a set of environmental conditions, or business conditions.

The paper employs survey research, structural equation modelling and t‐tests.

Results in this study of 217 companies from Australia, Singapore, The Netherlands and China finds general support for the hypotheses that different environmental situations provide the suitable conditions for a customer, competitor or societal orientated strategy. In particular, customer‐oriented strategies are most effective in placid clustered and turbulent environments, while competitor orientated strategies work best in a placid‐clustered environment. Societal marketing based strategies were shown to be most effective in placid random and placid clustered environments. This suggests that firms may use social marketing strategies in a pre‐emptive manner to maintain favourable environmental conditions for the organisation.

The findings are limited somewhat by the size and nature of the sample, although this compares well to other studies in the area of marketing orientation. The research shows the importance of the match of the environment type with the business strategy, as certain strategies are most effective in particular environmental conditions.

Choice of an appropriate business strategy is moderated by the environment. Marketing‐based business strategies are not always the most effective. In turbulent environments, customer‐oriented strategies seem to be most effective. Societal marketing strategies seem to be used to manage and maintain placid environments or business conditions. Competitor‐based strategies are best suited to placid‐clustered environments, business conditions, which are favourable and therefore attract greater competition.

This study also introduces an important measure of the societal orientation of the firm. It provides empirical supports the thesis that marketing strategies need to be tailored for the environment and so adds to the understanding of the interplay between the effectiveness of business strategies in different business conditions. There is not a great deal of research which suggests what type of marketing strategy is best suited to what type of environment. This paper makes an important contribution to this area.

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationships among strategy, flexibility, and performance in the supply chain context.

The research is based on a quantitative approach using a questionnaire survey and personal interviews from a total of 175 small and medium‐sized Canadian manufacturing companies. The identified constructs have been utilized to test a theoretical model using the path analysis technique.

First, the findings provide evidence of direct effects of strategy on flexibility and flexibility on performance. Second, innovative strategy firms must invest time and resources in developing new product and delivery flexibility; while customer‐oriented strategy firms are required to invest heavily in developing sourcing, product, and delivery flexibility and follower strategy firms need no investment in any specific type of flexibility. Third, results demonstrated that Canadian manufacturers must reconsider how they use information technology to enhance information systems flexibility and improve overall performance.

The measures of flexibility and strategy dimensions used to rate the supply chain organizations are a possible limitation of the research study.

Managers need to think seriously about which type of flexibility they implement and that they should not increase all dimensions of flexibility in their power; some dimensions of flexibility may not significantly contribute to the overall performance. Considering that small and medium‐sized enterprises have limited resources, it is important for managers to carefully assess their strategic needs before getting involved in any flexibility program; otherwise the result can be competitively negative.

No empirical study was found in the supply chain literature that specifically investigates the relationships among strategy, flexibility and performance in the supply chain context; the paper fills an important gap in the supply chain literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating effect of networking ties on the relationship between customer orientation and firm performance.

This study adopted a survey approach to collect data from 251 respondents in the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality in the Free State province, South Africa. Scales for data collection were operationalised from prior studies. A hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine the moderating effect of networking ties on the relationship between customer orientation and firm performance.

The results showed that customer orientation had a significant positive association with firm performance, thus supporting the existing calls for examining the unique contributions of customer orientation to firm performance. Furthermore, this study hypothesised that business, political, and social network ties positively moderated this association. However, the results showed that only business and social network ties had a positive and significant moderating effect, with the influence of customer orientation on firm performance being more pronounced for firms with high as opposed to low business and social network ties. Nevertheless, all the three types of network ties showed a positive and significant direct relationship with firm performance, thus supporting the consolidated literature on the positive impact of network ties on firm performance.

The practical implications are twofold. First, it encourages business owners to develop a customer-oriented approach as a key strategic objective in their pursuit for optimal business performance. Second, business owners and managers should increasingly exploit their business and social network ties to accumulate vital resources for effectively exploiting their customer-oriented capabilities as a means to improve their performance.

Even though customer orientation is a valuable internal strategic capability, its benefit on firm performance might be limited in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) when the businesses are unable to respond quickly to customer needs. This is more common when the SME is faced with resource limitations required for exploiting the new market opportunities. However, this study showed that SMEs can mitigate this issue by depending on their business and social network ties for valuable resources to effectively exploit opportunities that emerge from identified customer needs.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of learning climate on customer-oriented behaviors by incorporating salespeople’s customer knowledge in the banks. It also explores the mediating role of customer knowledge between learning climate and customer-oriented behaviors.

A conceptual two-level model that links learning climate to customer-oriented behaviors was developed and tested using data collected from salespeople and customers in banks in Taiwan. Data from 444 customers involving 92 salespeople was collected via a questionnaire and analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling.

The results show that learning climate encourages salespeople to develop customer knowledge and customer-oriented behaviors, and that salespeople’s customer knowledge positively influences customer-oriented behaviors. This study also provides empirical support for the hypotheses that learning climate helps salespeople increase customer-oriented behaviors through improving salespeople’s customer knowledge.

The findings highlight the importance of enhancing learning climate and customer knowledge to enable banks to improve salespeople’s customer-oriented behaviors. This research also points to customer knowledge as mediating mechanisms that can explain the association between learning climate and customer-oriented behaviors in the sales context.

By integrating knowledge management with organizational learning research, this study evaluates the effect of learning climate on salespeople’s customer-oriented behaviors by incorporating their customer knowledge. In addition, the present study points to salespeople’s customer knowledge as one of several mediating mechanisms that explains the association between learning climate and customer-oriented behaviors.

Recent research investigating customer‐oriented selling has indicated that greater attention needs to be focused on organizational or personal antecedents influencing customer‐oriented selling behaviors. Similar to most other departments, a selling department’s environment would include its goals, objectives, and culture, as well as the behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes of top and middle management. Through its corporate culture and environment, the organization’s expectations and requirements are transmitted to its employees, who then implement the organization’s policies and carry out organizational strategies. Therefore, it is apparent that both individual internal environment perceptions and managerial leadership styles could possibly have a significant impact on the level of customer‐oriented selling behavior exhibited by salespeople. Three organizational or personal variables likely related to customer‐oriented selling are examined in the present study. The variables include sales manager leadership style, psychological climate, and empowerment. Each of the variables, and an explanation of its expected relationship with customer‐oriented selling, is explored. Implications for managers from these potential relationships are also provided.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the supply chain strategy, flexibility, and performance relationships in the context of SMEs in Canada and Pakistan.

The research is based on a quantitative approach using a questionnaire survey from a total of 170 small and medium-sized Pakistani manufacturing companies. The current study draws upon the earlier work of Fantazy et al. (2009) for comparative purpose and employs path analysis technique.

The results partially confirm the findings of previous study on Canadian SMEs with regard to the relationships among strategy, flexibility, and performance in the context of supply chain. The survey results revealed that SMEs in Pakistan adopt followers strategy in order to achieve financial and non-financial performance. Whereas in the previous study, Canadian SMEs adopted innovative strategy and customer-oriented strategy in order to enhance their performance.

The literature did not reveal any study which attempted to compare supply chain strategy, flexibility, and performance of SMEs in developed and developing countries. The current study fills this important gap in the literature.

Within the retail banking sector, the customer-centric business model has become an important and new business trend in recent years. The enhancement of the frontline service employees’ engagement and their customer-oriented behaviors are among the key factors affecting business performance (BP) in this sector of the banking industry. The purpose of this paper is to improve management decisions to enhance BP through examining the relationship between the frontline employees’ engagement and BP while taking into account the mediating effect of customer-oriented behaviors on this relationship.

A quantitative approach was adopted to conduct the present study, and the respondents were sampled from a large commercial bank in Iran using a structured questionnaire. Overall, 50 branch managers and 90 frontline employees were selected using random sampling. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to ascertain the validity and reliability of the observed items and a structural equation model was used for testing the proposed hypotheses and research framework.

The findings showed that customer-oriented behaviors mediated the relationship between the frontline employees’ engagement and bank’s branches’ BP. Higher levels of the frontline employees’ engagement enhance the customer-oriented behaviors. It was revealed that the frontline employees are engaged in their job and organization. Moreover, the engaged frontline employees listen carefully to customers, the customer’s problem is important to them and they complete their tasks precisely for customers. It has been confirmed that customer-oriented behaviors enhance branches’ BP. The bank frontline employees’ engagement and customer-oriented behaviors, in turn, affected the bank’s branches’ financial performance, process performance and employee performance compared with the bank’s key competitors.

This study highlights the value of empirically establishing how employee customer-oriented behaviors are affected by employee engagement as an integrative construct bringing together BP.

This study can help improve BP by increasing the frontline employees’ engagement and their customer-oriented behaviors. This study suggests that organizations using the findings of this study could effectively assess their frontline employees’ engagement and their customer-oriented behaviors and then plan for improving them.

This study offers a customer-oriented initiative as a social responsibility to be considered by retail banks. In light of the social exchange theory, the banks valuing customer-oriented can provide employees with knowledge, skills, values and support to develop motivation and abilities to demonstrate customer-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors.

Previous studies demonstrated that the employees’ engagement affects their customer-oriented behaviors. In addition, studies have referred to the effect of employees’ customer-oriented behaviors on BP. However, to the best of the knowledge, key questions regarding how the employees’ engagement at the branch level fosters customer-oriented behaviors and, in turn, the bank’s branches’ BP, remain unanswered. Hence, this study contributes to the investigation of the mediating role of the frontline employees’ customer-oriented behaviors in the relationship between their engagement and branches’ BP in the retail banking sector.

10;This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Companies aiming to improve performance should ensure business strategies are customer-oriented. Desired outcomes become likelier still through a strong emphasis on organizational learning and innovativeness that is supplemented by a flexible approach to optimize the use and impact of key resources.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.