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The marketing literature indicates that a firm’s organizational culture plays a critical role in determining its market orientation (MO) and thereby the firm’s ability to successfully adapt to its environment to achieve superior business performance. However, our understanding of the organizational culture of market-oriented firms and its relationship with business performance remains limited in a number of important ways. Drawing on the behavioral theory of the firm and the competing values theory perspective on organizational culture, our empirical study addresses important knowledge gaps concerning the relationship between firm MO culture, MO behaviors, innovation, customer satisfaction, and business performance.

We used a survey methodology with Clan Cultural Orientation, Adhocracy Cultural Orientation, Market Cultural Orientation, and Hierarchy Cultural Orientation Clan. Market Orientation Behaviors, Innovation, and Customer Satisfaction and CFROA _t (Net Operating Income + Depreciation and Amortization – Disposal of Assets)/Total Assets.

The overall fit of the first Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) containing the three MO behavior sub-scales, the four organizational culture scales, and the innovation and satisfaction performance measures was good with a χ ² = 760.89, 524 df, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.916 and RMSEA = 0.055. The overall fit of the second CFA containing the business strategy, bureaucracy, and customer expectations control variables was also good with a χ ² = 243.26, 156 df, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.937 and RMSEA = 0.061. We also subsequently ran a third CFA in which the MO behavior construct was modeled as a second-order factor comprising the three first-order sub-scales (generation of market intelligence, dissemination of market intelligence, and responsiveness to market intelligence) each of which in turn arose from the relevant survey indicants. This measurement model also fit well with the data with a χ ² = 84.06, 63 df, p < 0.039; CFI = 0.955 and RMSEA = 0.047. Regressions using seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) with control variables and with R ² values ranging from 0.28 to 0.54.

MO culture has an important direct effect on firms’ financial performance as well as an indirect effect via MO behaviors and innovations. Importantly, our findings suggest that MO culture facilitates value-creating behaviors above and beyond those identified in the marketing literature as MO behaviors. In contrast to a series of studies by Deshpandé and colleagues (1993, 1999, 2000, 2004), our empirical results suggest the value of the internally oriented Clan and to a lesser degree Hierarchy cultural orientations as well as the more externally oriented Adhocracy and Market cultural orientations. The benchmark ideal MO culture profile we identify is consistent with organization theory conceptualizations of strong balanced organizational cultures in which each of the four competing values orientations is simultaneously exhibited to a significant degree (e.g., Cameron & Freeman, 1991). Our findings indicate that the organizational culture domain of MO appears to be at least as important (if not more so) in explaining firm performance and suggest that researchers need to re-visit the conceptualization, and perhaps more importantly the operationalization, of MO as a central construct in strategic marketing thought.

In building an MO culture, an important first step is to assess the firm’s existing organizational culture profile (e.g., Goodman, Zammuto, & Gifford, 2001). Organization theory researchers have developed competing values theory-based organizational culture assessment tools that can provide managers with an easily accessible mechanism for accomplishing this (Cameron & Quinn, 1999). The profile of the firm’s existing culture and the profile of the ideal culture for MO from our study can then be plotted on a “spider’s web” graphical representation (e.g., Hooijberg & Petrock, 1993). This aids the comparison of the firm’s existing cultural profile with the ideal MO profile, enabling managers to easily diagnose the areas, direction, and magnitude MO culture profile “gaps” in their firm (Cameron, 1997). Specific gap-closing plans and tactics for gaps on each of the four cultural orientations can then be identified as part of the development of a change management program designed to create an MO culture profile (e.g., Chang & Wiebe, 1996). Cameron and Quinn’s (1999) workbook provides managers with an excellent operational resource for planning and undertaking such gap-closing organizational culture change initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to examine two aspects of the increasing body of research in the field of project management, namely improvisational working and agile project management (APM).

This is a comparative paper, considering the extant literature on improvisational working within projects and APM. The paper is essentially conceptual, and concludes with a comparative table of constructs, and their segregation into components and outputs. The growth in the recognition of improvisation as a useful addition to the armoury of the project manager stems from the shift that is taking place within the body of project knowledge generally, in that historically the greater proportion of the project management literature has been the epitome of planning in the prescriptive mode, but that a shift has taken place over the last decade or so towards a more behavioural, and as a result of this, a less structured and more improvisational focus. The second area of scrutiny within this paper seeks to position the limited emerging literature on APM within the wider project literature, and to examine overlaps and commonalities with improvisational working within projects.

Common areas across the two working styles are exposed and documented, and there is analysis of recent attempts to combine them with more traditional models. Linkages with complexity theory and complex adaptive systems are also briefly addressed.

There is growing awareness amongst practitioners of the potential benefits of improvisational working and “agile” methods, and some potential benefits are identified.

This paper moves further from the “traditional” project‐based paradigm of “plan – then execute”, offering insights into potential emerging best practice for practitioners in some organisational contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the authors' in‐depth investigations of six successful turnarounds, which found that renewal was accomplished by a new management team that stepped outside the boundaries and constraints of the company and looked at its market through the eyes of customers and competitors.

The authors describe how to perform an outside‐in turnaround that refocuses the company on the needs and expectations of the customer. This customer focus energizes and focuses the entire organization toward a shared sense of purpose.

The forces moving a company to an inside‐out view are persistent and powerful. They must be countered with a tough resolve to ensure a company meets its customers' test for relevance.

The challenge of beginning a successful outside‐in turnaround is to find the right balance between realism and optimism.

The authors show how leading and sustaining an outside‐in turnaround means giving the organization a clear sense of purpose around the unifying theme of delivering superior customer value.

Masstige (mass-produced and affordable luxury) goods are receiving increasing literature-based attention. However, despite existing advances, insight into how different cultural backgrounds shape consumer perceptions, attitudes and behaviors toward masstige goods remains tenuous. Correspondingly, this study aims to examine the association of masstige luxury with customers’ love for and brand engagement with masstige products across cultures.

This study used a sample comprising 342 Indian and 354 Canadian masstige customers. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

The results corroborate brand prestige and identification as key antecedents to customers’ love for masstige brands, which in turn impact their brand engagement. Surprisingly, the authors find that the effects of brand prestige and brand identification on brand love and customer brand engagement do not significantly differ between Indian and Canadian customers. However, the positive effect of brand identification and brand love on customer brand engagement is stronger for Indian customers than for Canadian customers.

This study addresses an important literature-based gap in understanding how cultural backgrounds shape consumer perceptions of masstige brands. It offers key theoretical and practical implications for masstige marketing.

Identifying differential effects among Indian and Canadian customers provides a foundation for tailoring marketing approaches in the masstige sector.

This study addresses a critical literature-based gap in understanding how cultural backgrounds shape consumer perceptions of masstige brands, offering key theoretical and practical implications for masstige marketing.

This paper seeks to integrate stakeholder theory with the entrepreneurial orientation literature to explore relationships between distinct entrepreneurial behaviors and support from stakeholders with divergent interests.

A longitudinal study in the non‐profit professional theatre industry examines how relationships between entrepreneurial orientation and stakeholder support evolve over time. A series of regression analyses examine how support from diverse stakeholders influences entrepreneurial behaviors and, subsequently, how those entrepreneurial behaviors influence future stakeholder support.

The findings support a multi‐dimensional conceptualization of entrepreneurial orientation, point to tensions inherent in satisfying multiple stakeholder demands, and illustrate that different stakeholders support entrepreneurial behaviors in unique and sometimes unexpected ways. The findings offer insight into the complex balancing act that entrepreneurial managers must execute to generate support from distinct stakeholder markets.

This research provides researchers and managers with unique insights into the evolutionary nature of the relationships between distinct entrepreneurial behaviors and external stakeholder support.

Analysis of organizational decline has become central to the study of economy and society. Further advances in this area may fail however, because two major literatures on the topic remain disintegrated and because both lack a sophisticated account of how social structure and interdependencies among organizations affect decline. This paper develops a perspective which tries to overcome these problems. The perspective explains decline through an understanding of how social ties and resource dependencies among firms affect market structure and the resulting behavior of firms within it. Evidence is furnished that supports the assumptions of the perspective and provides a basis for specifying propositions about the effect of network structure on organizational survival. I conclude by discussing the perspective’s implications for organizational theory and economic sociology.