Malte Brettel, Andreas Engelen, Florian Heinemann, and Pakpachong Vadhanasindhu
Executive Summary
Globalization is a key theme in today’s economic environment. With the internationalization of businesses and markets, a better understanding of the applicability of management approaches and market strategies in other nations and cultures becomes more relevant. The market orientation concept, which includes market intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination, and responsiveness to market intelligence, has been shown to positively influence business performance. Managers who want to implement a market orientation must understand which approaches can be applied globally and which should be modified for a specific cultural setting.
Brettel, Engelen, Heinemann, and Vadhanasindhu examine the influence of the geographical setting on establishing a market orientation. More specifically, they investigate the potential influence of national culture on the relationship between market orientation and its antecedents in the context of two areas that differ significantly along cultural dimensions: Germany, which is characterized by low degree of collectivism and power distance, a medium degree of uncertainty avoidance, and high degree of masculinity, and Thailand and Indonesia, which represent cultures with a high degree of collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and femininity. To avoid distortions of the analysis, the authors only include new ventures, which usually do not have a mature organizational culture that could overlap national culture.
Brettel and colleagues examine the relationship between the management levers of planning intensity, market-oriented planning, decentralization, market-oriented staffing, participation, and consideration and the dimensions of market-oriented behavior using structural equation modeling. They show that the effect of some management levers as antecedents of market orientation is influenced by national culture, but culture-insensitive relationships also exist. Whenever individual behavior and/or interpersonal relationships are affected, the authors observe a strong influence of culture. However, when individual behavior and/or interpersonal relationships are not directly involved, the authors observe that cultural aspects do not play an important role in the levers’ effects. Rather, they find that the strength of the levers’ influence is dominated by the culture-independent structural characteristics of new ventures (e.g., small size, young age).
In general, this study demonstrates that management levers—in this case related to market-oriented behavior—do not function as mechanistic causal relationships but rather are dependent on the cultural predetermination of their employees. Management approaches that are successful in the Western world cannot necessarily be transferred to Thai and Indonesian contexts without adaptation.
Biography
Malte Brettel is University Professor for Business Administration and Sciences for Engineers and Scientists at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He received his doctoral degree and his postdoctoral qualification from WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management. He has worked as a management consultant and is cofounder of JustBooks (now ABEBooks). His areas of research interest include entrepreneurial management and development, entrepreneurial marketing, entrepreneurial finance, and innovation management. He has published in various books and journals and has presented his research at leading international conferences, including the AMA Summer Marketing Educators' Conference, the AOM Annual Meeting, the FMA Annual Meeting, and the Babson Entrepreneurship Conference.
Andreas Engelen works for a leading international consulting company in Düsseldorf, Germany. He received his master’s degree and his doctoral degree in business administration from RWTH Aachen University, Germany. His areas of research interest include international marketing and entrepreneurial marketing. He has presented his research at leading international marketing and entrepreneurship conferences.
Florian Heinemann is Assistant Professor of Business Administration and Sciences for Engineers and Scientists at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He received his doctoral degree from RWTH Aachen University and was Visiting Scholar in the Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center at the Wharton School. His areas of research interest include innovation management and entrepreneurial marketing. He has published in various journals and has presented his research at leading international conferences, including the AMA Summer Marketing Educators' Conference, the AOM Annual Meeting, and the Babson Entrepreneurship Conference.
Pakpachong Vadhanasindhu is Assistant Professor in the Department of Commerce at the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. She received her MBA from the University of Nebraska and her DBA from the University of San Diego. She currently teaches courses on various international subjects at the Chulalongkorn University.
Journal of International Marketing, Vol. 16, No. 2, June 2008
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