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While metrics are becoming increasingly important for marketing’s relevance, there is also a need to understand how they, as enablers of learning, affect marketing’s adaptive capabilities that ensure its long-term success. Therefore, this study aims to test the association of marketing and financial metrics use and the metric-based orientations of training and compensation, with two key marketing routines – exploitation, i.e. the perfecting of existing activities while allowing for incremental adaptations and exploration or experimentation accompanied by radical adaptation.

The study gathers data from 205 managers and uses partial least squares structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized relationships.

Marketing metrics encourage both forms of marketing adaptation. Financial metrics use discourages exploration. Market orientation and long-term orientation strengthen (weaken) the positive (negative) relationship between marketing (financial) metrics use and marketing exploration. Metric-based training is more positively associated with both adaptive capabilities than a metric-based compensation orientation, albeit weakly.

The study’s central proposition – that different metrics or metric orientations are associated with distinct types of knowledge, interpretations, mindsets, motivations and cultural contexts – provides a deeper theoretical understanding of the pathways by which a metric emphasis affects marketing adaptation.

Marketing managers should emphasize marketing metrics and training more than compensation, to promote marketing exploitation/exploration, while exercising caution in overstressing financial metrics given their negative association with exploration. This latter negative relationship can be weakened (as can the positive one between marketing metrics and exploration be strengthened) with increased market orientation and long-term orientation.

This study addresses the research gap regarding the relationship between metrics as a configurational element of marketing organization and marketing adaptation.

This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework, in an effort toward building a contingent theory of drivers and consequences of managerial metric use in marketing mix decisions, this paper develops a conceptual framework to test whether the relationship between metric use and marketing mix performance is moderated by firm and managerial characteristics.

Based on reviews of the marketing, finance, management and accounting literatures, and homophily, firm resource- and decision-maker-based theories and 22 managerial interviews, a conceptual model is proposed. It is tested via generalized least squares – seemingly unrelated regression estimation of 1,287 managerial decisions.

Results suggest that the impact of metric use on marketing mix performance is lower in firms which are more market oriented, larger and with worse recent business performance and for marketing and higher-level managers, while organizational involvement has a lesser nuanced effect.

While much is written on the importance of metric use to improve performance, this work is a first step toward understanding which settings are more difficult than others to accomplish this.

Results allow identification of several conditional managerial strategies to improve marketing mix performance based on metric use.

This paper contributes to the metric literature, as prior research has generally focused on the development of metrics or the linking of marketing efforts with performance metrics, but paid little attention to understanding the relationship between managerial metric use and performance of the marketing mix decision and has not considered how the relationship is moderated by firm and managerial characteristics.

The questions of when and what types of human resource (HR) support are needed tend to be unanswerable for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This article addresses this gap in the strategic HR literature. Hiring, training, employee retention/satisfaction, wages and benefits programs, and worker's compensation insurance are important to SMEs seeking to build strong capabilities and resources and to increase their competitive advantage.This article presents an analysis of the existing HR literature for SMEs. It introduces a decision model to help SMEs choose a cost-effective HR strategy, listing a range of options from hiring the HR function to electronic HR (eHR) and outsourcing

The 2008–2009 financial crisis has renewed concerns about managerial short-termism and its negative effects. Based on intertemporal choice theory, this chapter aims to identify the role that performance measurement and compensation systems can play in orienting managers toward building long-term performance potential in addition to achieving short-term results.

The findings suggest that certain types of measures used – in particular broader, more inclusive financial indicators, risk-adjusted measures, and key nonfinancial value drivers – as well as the timing of measurement and payment of rewards can lead to reduced time discounting and a lower devaluation of the future, and consequently to a prioritized managerial attention focus on long-term company goals.

This chapter contributes to a better understanding of the institutional determinants of managerial long-term orientation and the influence of organizational systems on goal prioritization in managerial intertemporal choice processes.

The findings have practical relevance for the design of incentive systems that aim to place an emphasis on ensuring long-term value creation.

Systems that guide managerial behavior toward the long term can help to increase economic and societal sustainability.

Despite the emergence of more integrated performance measurement approaches, time horizon has not been in the main focus of research in the field yet. This review provides a first structured overview of the temporal effects of different elements of performance measurement and compensation systems.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices and innovation performance in Spanish manufacturing firms. The paper focuses on the number of existing patents, analyzing the extent to which this variable is favored by HRM practices. It will also assess the extent to which patents explain the firm performance and mediate in the relationship between the latter and HRM practices.

The objective is to assess these relationships using the Spanish Survey of Industrial Strategic Behavior. The longitudinal analysis focuses on the years between 2001 and 2008, a period of great economic growth in Spain.

The findings show that the most innovative firms were also the most competitive ones. Furthermore, employment security positively affects innovations over time and training on new technologies is associated with the number of patents, when overall compensation practices are high.

This study demonstrated the existence of two objectives that HR managers should be aiming at. On the one hand, the development of patents should be a priority for obtaining better results over time. On the other hand, management should invest in HRM practices because they favor innovation and are neither a waste of time nor resources.

This study contributes to the literature, surpassing the limitations of previous research, by assessing the role of HRM practices in innovation and company outcomes and by using a longitudinal study design.

This paper seeks to study the impact of adopting quality orientation as a business operations philosophy to enhance a firm's performance. Specifically, it aims to identify various indicators that make up a quality orientation philosophy, and to research their role in improving business performance in the banking sector of the service industry.

The paper surveyed retail banking firms for this study, and used path analysis and structure equation modeling (SEM) to develop the study model. This model was tested to develop the process by which quality orientation philosophy, if adopted, can impact a business's performance.

Results indicate that specific indicators of quality orientation, when operationalized as a business philosophy, can enhance a banking firm's performance. This study also provides an insight for managers as to the process of adopting quality orientation philosophy in their businesses.

Research was conducted on a specific sector of service industry: the banking sector. The relatively small size of the study sample may impact the outcome of research applicability in some large businesses. However, the research does provide valuable insights as to how other businesses can adopt quality orientation in their operations.

This paper examines the process by which operational activities should be designed to effect a service firm's performance by placing emphasis on the quality aspect of each indicator that comprises quality orientation. This differs from other studies in the sense that it first operationalizes quality orientation as a set of indicators, and then shows how individual indicators influence business performance.

The purpose of the current study is to examine the utility of Six Sigma interventions as a performance measure and explore its applicability for making the training design and delivery operationally efficient and strategically effective.

This is a single revelatory case study. Data were collected from multiple sources. In depth interviews of Six Sigma champion, black belt and green belt executives were conducted for understanding the Six Sigma interventions in HR function in general and in training functions in particular.

Application of Six Sigma approach was found to be helpful for better alignment of training function in MNC bank with the organizational requirements. Six Sigma changed the role of the function towards proaction. Research limitations/implications – This study has usual limitation of single case study research. Moreover, the impact of Six Sigma and its dependence on organizational structure, organizational culture, leadership role, social embeddedness, role stress etc. are identified as areas for future research.

The study brings out the applicability of Six Sigma approach for HR department and training function.

The paper delineates the application of Six Sigma approach in training function. It explores the applicability of this approach to ensure the training effectiveness by pulling the training function closer to internal and external customers' requirements and by its strategic alignment with organizational goals.

Platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies embrace and enable interactions with external entities. Firms pursuing these approaches conduct business and interact with environments differently than those pursuing traditional closed strategies. This chapter considers these strategies together highlighting similarities and differences between platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies. We focus on managerial and organizational challenges for organizations pursuing these strategies and identify four institutional logic shifts associated with these strategic transitions: (1) increasing external focus, (2) moving to greater openness, (3) focusing on enabling interactions, and (4) adopting interaction-centric metrics. As mature incumbent organizations adopt these strategies, there may be tensions and multiple conflicting institutional logics. Additionally, we consider four strategic leadership topics and how they relate to platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies: (1) executive orientation and experience, (2) top management teams, (3) board-management relations, and (4) executive compensation. We discuss theoretical implications, and consider future directions and research opportunities.

The significance of the search for sales organization effectiveness is underlined by the major costs represented by the field salesforce for many organizations, and it is heightened by the pressures of global competition and new challenges to develop long‐term customer relationships as the foundation for competitive and sustainable marketing strategies. A study of sales management in British companies adds to an emerging research stream by identifying certain characteristics of superior performance and effectiveness in the business‐to‐business sales organization. We find that conventional measures of salesforce size, call‐rates, costs and productivity reveal relatively little about the differences between more effective and less effective sales organizations and may be dangerously misleading. The hallmarks of effective sales organizations we found to be: balanced compensation strategy; successful salesperson characteristics, in terms of motivation, customer orientation, team orientation, and sales support orientation; high performance in the drivers of sales effectiveness, i.e. sales presentation, technical knowledge, but most particularly adaptiveness, teamwork, sales planning, and sales support; the use of behaviour‐based control approaches involving effective monitoring, directing, evaluating and rewarding activities by sales managers; and, sound organizational structures. The research findings contribute benchmarks to a powerful management agenda to be addressed by executives in pursuing sales organization effectiveness.

Exploratory research which provides insight into the global leadership potential that is being developed in Mexican companies through their management practices.

Questionnaires were mailed to a random sample of 500 executives of firms that were members of the American chamber of commerce of Mexico. The response rate, with follow up mailings, was 69.4 per cent (347 questionnaires). The questionnaires gathered information about the criteria used in making executive management promotion decisions and for performance evaluation.

Significant differences between management practices in Mexico and the US were identified. These differences may influence the ability of Mexican companies to compete in the global market place.

Further research should be conducted to measure the effects of different management styles and cultural differences on the ability of firms to compete in the global market place. The findings in this paper may not be generalizable to companies in cultures that are significantly different from Mexico.

Mexican companies, when compared to US firms, appear to place more emphasis on administrative management skills than on leadership skills. In addition, they place less emphasis on developing international expertise. To increase their level of global competitiveness and orientation the paper recommends that the companies modify their training programs and management practices.

This paper provides a new view of the reward and promotion practices within Mexican companies and relates that view to the development of global managers. This paper should be of interest to executives in Mexico and companies with operations in Mexico, and to researchers interested in global management.