CORPORATE CULTURE – AS A BARRIER OF MARKET ORIENTATION IMPLEMENTATION

Abstract

The culture, supporting effectiveness of marketing activities, is most frequently designated by two basic terms in the literature: as the marketing culture or as the market culture. If the corporate culture shall be of marketing or market character, which in both cases means figuratively market-oriented, then the basic prerequisites shared by the members of the company should incorporate for instance that the company is affected by the environment in which it exists, that the company is able to establish and analyze impacts of the environment and react to them; that the company is able to satisfy needs of the key stakeholders (customers, suppliers, intermediaries, etc.). And the basic values accepted by the company and shared by the members of the company should accommodate such values like: team work, highly competitive and result orientation, high internal and external orientation, market aggressiveness, success, flexibility, interfunctional cooperation, etc.; norms of behavior in the company (continuous market success monitoring and measuring, market-related innovativeness and flexibility - non-bureaucratic solution of problems, openness and sincerity in market-related communication - interfunctional coordination, market-related quality orientation, market-related velocity, market-related staff appreciation, etc.) must conform to these values. The content corporate culture characteristics indicated above are of key character for the market-oriented company. The relevant method of thinking shall be shared in the whole company and reflected at all corporate levels. The market orientation should become the dominant culture pulling the company together. On the other hand, when the above noted basic values don’t accepted by company and don’t shared by members of company then corporate culture should be an important barrier of market orientation implementation.

Aim of the article and research questions: Paper is focused to the problem of corporate culture as a barrier of market orientation implementation. The paper includes theoretical insight of market orientation implementation in companies from the corporate culture point of view. Contemporary cognition implicates the fact, that implementation of marketing concept depends on sharing degree of corporate culture by members of company. These facts and others are starting points for notification of importance corporate culture for corporate market orientation implementation and designing the research methodology.

Methods used in research: Setting out from an analysis of theoretical resources dealing with market orientation concepts, a theoretical framework of empiric research was developed based on the triangulation method. Conclusions of theoretical and empirical insights are summarized in several selected results of the research made that deal primarily with the identification of key barriers of market orientation implementation in high-tech companies in Czech Republic.

Conclusions: Though the marketing concept principles are accepted widely by the companies, continuous development of managerial skills in the current dynamic environment requests effective marketing planning, which still remains the problematic sector in many companies. The researches point out that only very few business entities do really understand this sector and apply sophisticated marketing activities. Existence of organizational barriers, preventing implementation of marketing programmes and customer-oriented strategies, is on the one side considered one of the main reasons of failed marketing in the companies. On the other side, there is an objection claiming that low level of marketing activities should be rather linked with the human element playing an important role in the course of implementation of the marketing strategies or the market culture level of the company. The paper is written in the framework of research project “Research of implementation of market orientation in high-tech firms” supported by Grant Agency Czech Republic (GA 402/07/1493).