Christian Homburg, Marko Grozdanovic, & Martin Klarmann
Executive Summary
Maintaining and enhancing an organization's responsiveness to customers and competitors has become an increasingly important managerial task in today's firms. Activities for influencing a company's responsiveness to customers and competitors fall into two basic categories: (1) improving a company's information processing (the "cognitive organizational system") and (2) changing an organization's culture (the "affective organizational system"). Because change processes targeted at increasing an organization's responsiveness usually absorb a lot of resources, including managerial time and energy, managers are often forced to focus their efforts either on changes to the cognitive organizational system or on changes to the affective organizational system.
Against this background, this study focuses on the relative importance of these two systems as drivers of organizational responsiveness. The authors report the results from a large empirical study with 290 companies from various industries, such as the financial, chemical, pharmaceutical, and automotive industries. The most important finding is that the affective organizational system is more important in driving responsiveness to customers, whereas the cognitive organizational system is more important in driving responsiveness to competitors. In addition, the results show that the relative importance of the affective and cognitive organizational systems as drivers of responsiveness to customers and competitors is strongly influenced by market characteristics. More specifically, the authors find that in firms with a strong market position (e.g., with a high market share or in markets with strong entry barriers for new competitors), the affective system becomes much more important in driving a business unit's ability to respond quickly to new market-related developments.
This study is informative for managers in several ways. First, it shows that the two key types of organizational responsiveness (i.e., responsiveness to customers and responsiveness to competitors) depend on different major driving forces. Second, and more specifically, it highlights that competitor-related responsiveness is most effectively ensured through competitor-related information processing. Conversely, the results indicate that customer-related responsiveness depends more strongly on the customer orientation of values, beliefs, and norms.
Biography
Christian Homburg holds a diploma in Mathematics and Business Administration (1986) and a doctorate in Business Administration (1988) from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. Between 1989 and 1992, he worked for one of Germany's largest machinery companies, serving as a director of strategic planning, marketing, and management accounting. After receiving his habilitation degree from the University of Mainz in 1995, he became Professor of Marketing at WHU Koblenz. He joined the University of Mannheim in 1999. Christian Homburg is currently serving as chairman of the Marketing Department, director of the Institute for Market-Oriented Management, and president of Mannheim Business School. His research interests include market-oriented management, customer relationship management, and sales management. He has published in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and International Journal of Research in Marketing. Professor Homburg is also founder and chair of the advisory board of Professor Homburg & Partners, a consulting firm that specializes in marketing and sales management.
Marko Grozdanovic is a management consultant at the world's largest chemical company, BASF AG, Germany. He studied business administration in Germany and the United Kingdom. Between 2001 and 2005, he was a doctoral student at the University of Mannheim, Germany, and worked as a freelance consultant for the consulting firm Professor Homburg & Partners. He holds a master's degree in Business Administration and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Mannheim, Germany. His research interests include market-oriented management, competitive behavior, customer relationship management, and sales management. In summer 2005, he was awarded the best-paper award in the Marketing Strategy and Marketing Management Track at the American Marketing Association Summer Educator's Conference.
Martin Klarmann is a doctoral student in the Marketing Department at the University of Mannheim, Germany. He also works as a freelance marketing and sales consultant for Professor Homburg & Partners in Mannheim, Germany. He holds a master's degree in Business Administration from the University of Mannheim. His research interests include market orientation, business-to-business marketing, and multivariate methods (in particular, structural equation modeling). Martin Klarmann has won several awards for his research, among them the Overall Best Paper Award at the 2006 American Marketing Association Winter Educator's Conference.
Journal of Marketing, Vol. 71, No. 3, July 2007
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