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Market-oriented relations has been regarded as a kind of public relations practices widely performed by the practitioners of public relations and marketing. This study attempts to discuss market-oriented relations in the digital era in which public relations and marketing practitioners' involvement in managing market-oriented relations was simultaneously related to their perceptions of interactivity effects, value of public relations and benefits of digital media usage in public relations practices.

A self-administrated online survey targeting 241 practitioners engaged in coordinating public relations activities in Hong Kong was conducted in 2017.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis showed that practitioners' involvement in market-oriented relations practices had significant positive effects on their perceptions of interactivity effects, value of public relations and benefits of digital media usage. Practitioners' perceptions of interactivity effects and benefits of digital media usage were positively affected by their perceptions of public relations value, particularly public relations effectiveness. Clients' profitability and business intelligence, as well as interactivity effects in terms of involvement and perceived customization were practitioners' key concerns in managing market-oriented relations.

This study explores how practitioners of public relations and marketing perceived and practiced public relations in the digital era. Specifically, the conception of market-oriented relations in regard to the use of digital media was discussed in the proposed structural model.

This chapter reconsiders commonly held views on the ownership and management of private property, contrasting capitalist and simple property, particularly in relation to how a firm shareholder governance model has shaped society. This consideration is motivated by the scale and scope of the modern global crisis, which has combined financial, economic, social and cultural dimensions to produce world disenchantment.

By contrasting an exchange value standpoint with a use value perspective, this chapter explicates current conditions in which neither the state nor the market prevail in organising economic activity (i.e. cooperative forms of governance and community-created brand value).

This chapter offers recommendations related to formalised conditions for collective action and definitions of common guiding principles that can facilitate new expressions of the principles of coordination. Such behaviours can support the development of common resources, which then should lead to a re-appropriation of the world.

It is necessary to think of enterprises outside a company or firm context when reflecting on the end purpose and means of collective, citizen action. From a methodological standpoint, current approaches or studies that view an enterprise as an organisation, without differentiating it from a company, create a deadlock in relation to entrepreneurial collective action. The absence of a legal definition of enterprise reduces understanding and evaluations of its performance to simply the performance by a company. The implicit shift thus facilitates the assimilation of one with the other, in a funnel effect that reduces collective projects to the sole projects of capital providers.

Because forsaking society as it stands is a radical response, this historical moment makes it necessary to revisit the ideals on which modern societies build, including the philosophy of freedom for all. This utopian concept has produced an ideology that is limited by capitalist notions of private property.

The past decade has seen a flurry of academic and practitioner interest in organizational culture. This has coincided with an increase of theoretical interest in organizational marketing. However, despite some obvious linkages, there have been few studies examining the links between the two. This paper synthesises existing marketing and culture theory into conceptualisations of organizational and market‐oriented cultures. Specifically, such cultures are presented as stratified, processual and subcultural. Thereafter, the development of a market‐led culture is reviewed in terms of the ability of the subculture of marketing to dominate the wider organizational culture. A series of propositions is forwarded relating to factors which affect this interaction. Conclusions and implications for research are presented and discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to present the major features of market orientation (MO) and its benefits for schools, suggests an inventory to measure the degree of MO in a school, and provides strategies to incorporate elements of MO into the school culture.

An instructional, technical approach which is based on empirical literature both from business and service marketing and from the emergent research on educational marketing is taken in this article.

The paper analyzes the implications of MO for the management of school‐environment relations, and provides an inventory to measure the degree of MO in individual schools. In addition, a stage by stage approach to incorporating MO into the school culture is broadly discussed, with a focus on the principal's key role in this process.

The paper concludes by suggesting some implications for future research on MO in schools and other educational institutions and highlights the significance of MO for our understanding of school marketing in the era of competition and choice.

As MO frequently underpins the development and implementation of successful organization‐environment relationships, the current paper is a first attempt to help principals and administrators incorporate MO into their school, thereby capitalizing on the great advantages of market‐oriented organizational cultures.

To model how resources and capabilities co‐evolved in a contract research provider's customer relationships and how this affected market orientation, and to develop hypotheses for further testing.

Single qualitative and abductive longitudinal case study.

The provider focused on generating knowledge of current and near future customer needs through interactions with customers and other key actors. The provider also pursued the building of capabilities which would enable it to broaden the application areas to the needs of a larger group of potential customers. Exchanges with specific customers were used by the provider for the acquisition of resources and capabilities concerning details related to functions and, especially, applications, yet these resources and capabilities were subsequently broadened to all‐around solutions. In contrast, customer interactions were less important in acquiring resources and capabilities. Eight hypotheses were also formulated.

One cannot be certain of the external validity of the findings.

Knowledge‐intensive firms with a high degree of customer interaction must seek to balance their individual customer relationships and their customer relationship portfolio across time with regard to four customer types, so that the firm achieves the desired levels and balance of mutuality, particularity, mutual relationship capability (in the shorter term) and more generic capability and general market orientation (in the longer term).

It examines the interface between the resource‐based view of strategy and relationship marketing. It is relevant to strategy and marketing scholars as well as to practitioners in knowledge‐intensive organisations that have customer relationships.

In the context of the general funding scarcity in the nonprofit sector, this paper aims to inquire into the governance challenges facing nonprofit aid organizations in a donor–recipient partner relationship. In particular, the authors focus on the challenges of commercial diversification as the espoused alternative to aid-funding.

A qualitative design was deployed to collect and analyze data collected from interviews conducted in three case organizations in an aid development partnership.

The various responses at the organizational level are presented as well as analyses of the inter-organizational aspects. All organizations have responded strategically to reductions in funding from state/government and other aid sources by attempting to diversify commercially yet at the same time maintain dependency on aid-funding. This entailed tensions between the logics of the market and mission. These tensions are manifest not only within the organizations but also in the relations between them.

Analyses of the twin-track strategies have highlighted that maintaining aid dependency and resource diversification have different and conflicting relational prerequisites and require diverse and conflicting internal capabilities. The paper develops a conceptual framework for capturing the governance challenges of this strategic dilemma and concludes that the choices of pursuing continued aid-funding and seeking new commercial opportunities are invariably mutually exclusive.

Hong Kong's prominent position in international textiles and the clothing trade will continue to shift under the transition of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA). To provide a better understanding of the relationships between the local clothing manufacturers' generic marketing strategies and their deployment for future challenges, some 33 industrialists were interviewed. The results reveal no difference between the marketing‐oriented firms and the less marketing‐oriented firms in relation to the adoption of strategic actions in response to the abolition of the MFA. The results also indicate that firms, irrespective of their marketing approaches, shared similar views regarding the perceptions of the impact of the MFA upon Hong Kong industry and the overall future prospects of the Hong Kong clothing industry. Nevertheless, an interesting finding was that there might be a relationship between a firm's marketing approaches and its attitude to experimenting with strategies under different business environments. Less marketing‐oriented firms are found to be less proactive towards future uncertainties than the more marketing‐oriented firms.

Why are some libraries more market‐oriented than others? The purpose of this paper is to answer this question by examining the pertinent issues underlying the inter‐relationship between market‐orientation and superior service performance.

An integrated methodological approach of qualitative as well as quantitative methods was used to gain knowledge behind the market‐orientation – service performance relationship. The directors and consumers of 33 academic and special libraries participated as respondents in this study.

In total, three kinds of libraries were found: the strong; the medium; and the weak. The findings show that the higher market‐orientation is positively connected with the libraries’ superior service performance.

The implication of this research does suggest that the gap between the service provider and receiver can be closed by increasing the marketing competence of service provider.

The practical implication for libraries is that it pays to be market‐oriented, the ultimate result being higher customer satisfaction.

The relationship between market‐orientation and service performance has yet to be explored and established in the library world. This is one of the first such studies which attempted to investigate this inter‐relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt a customer‐centric value creation perspective to provide insights into the contribution of business orientations, especially marketing orientation and innovation orientation to the creation of customer‐centric value (customer equity and brand performance).

To undertake this examination, a model was developed and then tested to validate its applicability in the context of both developed and developing economies. The paper includes partial least squares.

The findings demonstrate that being marketing‐oriented and innovation‐oriented appears to be important in creating customers, keeping them, and increasing add‐on selling to them and rewards the firm with greater brand performance in the marketplace. Importantly, these relationships are universally held across developed and developing business environments. Interestingly, marketing orientation was found to contribute more to the creation of customer‐centric value than innovation orientation in developing business environment, whereas the opposite was found in the context of developed business environment.

The data incorporate only the subjective measures of customer‐centric value. Future studies can use financial measures to complement the self‐reporting approach used in this paper. This dual‐approach to measuring the value of customers to the firm (customer equity) and brand performance would provide additional insights into the customer‐centric marketing literature.

The findings suggest that managers should strive to develop a high level of marketing orientation and innovation orientation as two efficient ways to achieve higher levels of customer equity. They are also advised that if their firms are more effective in acquiring potential customers, retaining current customers, and enhancing add‐on selling, they see their brands perform better. Importantly, the findings also provide guidance for managers on how to allocate their resources to key business activities (e.g. marketing and innovation) in the context of international business (developing versus developed business environments).

This study contributes to customer‐centric marketing theory by enhancing understanding of the contribution of marketing and innovation to the creation of customer‐centric value in different business environments. This study also contributes to the business orientation literature by demonstrating the utility of a cultural‐behavioral approach in measuring marketing orientation and innovation orientation.

The purpose of this study is to investigate union effects on wages, employment, and productivity in China. The relationships between unionization and these three economic variables are first tested at the national level and then examined in the eastern, central, and western regions, respectively.

Provincial-level panel data from 1994 to 2014 are used in this study, compiled from various Chinese Statistics Year Books, and covering 29 provinces. The Ordinary Least Square is firstly employed to examine union impacts. Then, in view of the endogeneity of unionization, the Two-Stage Least Square estimation with instrument variables is adopted to reexamine union effects. Overidentification tests are conducted, verifying the validity of these instruments.

At the national level, Chinese unions have significantly positive effects on wages but no significant effect on employment and productivity. In the eastern region, unions are significantly related to increased employment. In the western region, union activity not only significantly promotes wages but also improves productivity. In the central region, unionization has no significant impact. These findings suggest that equipping Chinese unions with a collective and cooperative face can generally help them improve workers' interests. Their effectiveness varies across the three economic regions.

Compared with the survey data conducted in certain cities and industries, the provincial-level panel data used in this article have the advantage of capturing the overall effects of unionization. An instrument variable method is used to address the endogeneity issue. After exploring union effects at the national level, this paper focuses on observing the differences in union roles in three economic regions.