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This study aims to examine individual-specific market orientation as an innovative approach and its relationship with marketing skills among artisan entrepreneurs in India.

The study adopted an in-depth interview to explore variables, a questionnaire survey to understand their latent dimensions through exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to test the relationship between constructs under study.

The interview result indicates that 20 variables explain factors affecting individual-specific market orientation with four latent dimensions: customer orientation, competitor orientation, external coordination orientation and personal selling orientation. There is a significant and positive relationship between customer orientation and personal selling orientation with the marketing skills of artisan entrepreneurs in India.

The study is confined to three southern states of India and weaving villages known for their endemic product specifications.

The study found significance in orienting artisan entrepreneurs of developing countries and equipping them with desired skills to meet the changing dynamics of the market and meet their livelihood needs. The study further supports policymaking in strengthening the capability of artisans to enter the market without mediators.

The model provides insight into other unorganized sectors to formulate innovative approaches to strengthen marketing skills and entrepreneurial ability.

As an exploratory study, examining individual-level market orientation as an innovative approach and their relationship with marketing skills among artisan entrepreneurs was unexplored in several unorganized sectors, including handlooms.

Extant studies of the market orientation of service firms rarely consider the contribution of individual employees to the realization of this orientation. Existing scales that measure market orientation reveal the perceptions of a key informant about the dominant orientation within the firm. These scales do not measure the willingness of employees to act in a market‐oriented way. This paper aims to report the development of a multi‐dimensional scale of individual market‐oriented behavior.

The scale development process included identification of items from focus groups with employees of a major Canadian financial services firm and the market orientation literature. A pretest with marketing practitioners and academics helped to purify and reduce the number of items. Finally, a sample of North American financial services employees responded to the items in a web‐based questionnaire.

Confirmatory factor analysis of the responses confirmed the presence of a single latent construct with three dimensions: information acquisition, information sharing and strategic response, measured by 20 items.

Although scale validation included both qualitative and quantitative tests that triangulated the opinions of multiple stakeholders in the service delivery chain, future research must also test the predictive validity of this scale.

Such research is important to increase understanding of how service organizations foster market orientation. The I‐MARKOR augments the organizational scorecard approach with individual level measurement.

The scale provides a method to assess differences between individuals within an organization, enabling empirical research on differences between departments, roles, training and other characteristics that may influence the extent to which an individual performs market‐oriented behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether individual market orientation facilitates the development of learning orientation before influencing business-to-business (B2B) salespeople’s performance within the banking industry.

Data were gathered from 539 B2B salespeople from 18 licenced local and foreign financial institutions in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, by means of a structured survey. The individual market orientation (I-MARKOR) scale was used to measure their market-oriented behaviour specifically in terms of information acquisition, information dissemination and coordination of strategic response. The data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis via structural equation modelling to examine the hypothesized relationships.

Information Dissemination and Coordination of Strategic Response are reported to impose significant intervention effects on the relationship between learning orientation and job performance. Salespeople who embrace positive learning values are in a favourable position to disseminate and respond to new market information. Subsequently, these behaviours helped them to achieve higher levels of job performance.

By assessing and profiling the market-oriented behaviour of their salespeople, firms will be able to focus on the right competencies training and market-focussed performance appraisal.

This paper contributes to the enrichment of the existing literature on individual market orientation and learning orientation by proposing a model that was empirically tested to be a valid and reliable predictor of job performance.

Considering that little is known on market orientation at the individual level, this study investigates the effects of individual market orientation on proactive service behavior, and subsequently, sales performance among business-to-business salespeople. Based on social cognitive theory and competing values framework, this paper also examines the interaction effects of organizational culture on the link between individual market orientation and proactive service behavior.

The study sampled 539 business-to-business salespeople from 18 corporate banks in Kuala Lumpur by using a questionnaire survey.

The results of the study show that adhocracy culture strengthens the effects of information acquisition on proactive service behavior, while at the same time weakens the impact of coordination of strategic response on the same outcome. Meanwhile, rational culture displayed negative contingent effects of information dissemination on proactive service behavior.

Given its link to sales performance and proactive service behavior, banks should motivate their employees to embrace market orientation as individual competencies. This research outcome will aid managers in developing strategies and inculcating the right culture to ensure the market-oriented behaviors are internalized and transpired into positive outcomes.

This paper contributes to the enrichment of the existing market orientation frameworks by offering underlying mechanisms (cultural environment and proactive service behavior) through which market-oriented behaviors contribute to the sales performance of business-to-business salespeople within the financial service industry. It is also among the earliest studies that examine the influence of individual market orientation and organizational culture on proactive service behavior.

This study aims to examine the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) integrity on organizations’ strategic orientation. The authors propose that CEOs who have high degrees of integrity tend to negatively influence each of the three core dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) – innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking. They also argue that this impact of CEO integrity is likely to be stronger for overconfident CEOs and the CEOs with high power. Furthermore, this negative relationship is expected to attenuate when the firm has high customer orientation and when the CEO is compensated with high equity-pay ratio.

Seemingly unrelated regression analysis was conducted on panel of 741 firm-year observations of 213 firms across 2014–2017. CEO integrity and each of the three dimensions of EO were measured using content analysis of CEOs’ letters to shareholders. CEO power was measured using CEO stock ownership and CEO duality. CEO overconfidence was measured by using options-based measure. Customer orientation was measured by using content analyses on annual reports. CEO equity-pay based ratio was measured as sum of value of stock and option awards divided by CEO’s total compensation. This study considered alternative measures and performed treatments for potential endogeneity, sample selection bias and outliers.

The research findings conclude that organizations with CEOs who have high integrity tend to have lower levels of all sub-dimensions of EO – innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking. Further, the results indicate that the negative effect that CEO integrity has, affects one of its dimensions – proactiveness, such that the relation is strengthened when the CEO has high power and is highly overconfident. This negative effect weakens when the CEO is compensated with high equity-pay ratio. The results also indicate that the negative effect of integrity and innovativeness and risk-taking weakens when the firm has high customer orientation.

The research contributes to upper echelon theory literature by adding to the discussion of how business executives’ psychological traits map onto firm behavior. This research also finds common ground between literature on innovation and upper echelons, contributing to awareness about the drivers of firms’ EO.

This research addresses the question of firm relation to EO by highlighting that firms’ EO is also shaped by the psychological traits of their CEOs and the interaction of these traits with CEOs’ cognitive biases. Thus, board members of firms led by CEOs with high integrity can limit CEO’s risk-averse behavior by focusing on their training and by creating incentive systems. It is also advantageous for CEOs to understand that integrity is a double-edged sword, thus leveraging the strengths of their integrity, while simultaneously using tools such as training to diminish its negative aspects.

This paper fulfils a twofold identified need to: study the antecedents of each of the three dimensions of EO, not limited to corporate governance; and unearth the counterproductive behaviors associated with bright traits that make up their dark side

The purpose of this paper is to gain an increased understanding of the moderating role of national culture on the impacts of intra‐organizational factors on market orientation.

Using Schwartz's cultural value dimensions, the paper presents a set of propositions regarding the moderating effects of conservatism, intellectual autonomy, hierarchy, egalitarianism, and mastery dimensions of national cultural values on the relationships between market orientation and various intra‐organizational variables including interdepartmental connectedness, top management emphasis, interdepartmental conflict, centralization, formalization, and market‐based reward systems.

National cultural values can determine the importance of various antecedents to market orientation.

The conceptual framework presented in this paper contributes to the extant literature in market orientation by investigating the context dependent nature of the relationships involving market orientation and its antecedents in efforts to expand the theoretical knowledge base on the implementation of marketing concept in a global context.

In light of critiques of structured studies of market orientation in firms, this paper reports on a qualitative investigation of market orientation amongst craftspersons. Behaviour is conceptualised as the result of interactions between individuals' value sets, goals, perceptions and activities. Following examination of the theory that the distinct value sets of craftspersons render them unlikely to behave in a market oriented way, the methods and results of an empirical study of craft food producers are reported. The study finds that participants strongly perceived themselves as prioritising non‐commercial, lifestyle‐oriented goals. At the same time, however, much evidence was found of market oriented tendencies and the desire to pursue commercial ambitions. Analysis proposes that the specialist niche markets in which these participants find themselves mean that adherence to “craft” principles positively contributes to marketing advantage and achievement of commercial goals. The implications for market orientation research are discussed.

There is an overemphasis on an outside‐in, macro‐organizational view of learning and an under‐emphasis on the inside‐out view which recognizes that people are the main agents of learning and change. Attempts at building a learning organization should start with an understanding of how adults learn and develop rather than elaborate ideas about competitive strategy, market research and information dissemination. Adult learning theory tells us that people learn primarily by being encouraged to tackle challenges, experiment, fail and correct failures and reflect on their experiences. The challenge in building learning organizations is fighting the bureaucratization that often replaces experimentation with control and routine. This paper examines the literature on market orientation, organizational learning and adult learning theory to identify how individual level learning can be maximized as a mechanism for enhancing organizational learning. Recommendations are made to integrate these streams of research and offer suggestions for further research.

The measurement of both marketing culture and behaviour provides the opportunity to gain more insight into the overall market focus of organisations. This article seeks to determine the market orientation and marketing culture of all staff within organisations, to ascertain to what extent other members of an organisation support or create barriers to the successful implementation of the marketing concept. This paper will provide a brief overview of the existing literature in the field of market orientation and marketing culture. After detailing the research design and methodology, a summary developed from 11 focus group sessions – consisting of all staff in one public library service in Victoria, Australia – is presented. The findings indicate that while all areas within this organisation are committed to marketing, there are various interpretations of marketing and how it should be implemented. In addition, the research finds a number of factors that could be instrumental in the successful implementation of the marketing concept in public libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the implications of different entrepreneurial orientations on business start‐up and development challenges.

This research reflects surveys of 1,075 experienced entrepreneurs and business and entrepreneurship students in Estonia during the years 2005‐2010. An additional method is action learning and reflections of training focused on recognising new business opportunities during the economic crises.

Combinations of co‐creative and innovative entrepreneurial orientations are more popular than the imitative entrepreneurial orientation. There is, however, an essential contradiction between stressing the principles of co‐creative orientation at the first stages of business opportunity identification and taking a more individualistic approach to innovation at later stages of the business development process and implementing the related changes. Potential entrepreneurs developing radically new innovative ideas in emerging economies should assess more realistically their existing core competences and search for opportunities to improve their competence base through cross‐border networking.

Surveys that apply the self‐assessment tool do not comprise a representative sample of all Estonian entrepreneurs. These surveys have been conducted in training settings and support self‐development of trainees. Research results can be used for differentiating entrepreneurship training and education. An important opportunity for entrepreneurship education in the context of organisational change is to support the cross‐border exchange of entrepreneurial ideas between “blue ocean dreamers”, who sometimes lack entrepreneurship experience, and more experienced entrepreneurs, who may be trapped in some regionally‐limited business in a highly competitive domestic market.

The results of the research explain why entrepreneurship training has to take into consideration differences between imitative, individually innovative and co‐creative entrepreneurs.