سازمان های بازارمحور در یک اقتصاد در حال ظهور: مطالعه پیوندهای دست رفته

The advantages of market orientation, entrepreneurship, and learning orientation to organizations have been evidently documented in Western economies. However, there has been little research into these practices and their impact on enhancing competitive advantages in emerging economies. This exploratory study, utilizing data from China's emerging economy, found that organizations with higher level of market orientation tend to be more learning-oriented, emphasize more on entrepreneurship, and be able to achieve higher level of organizational performance, than those with a lower level of market orientation.

In order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage (SCA), marketing literature suggests that organizations are compelled to be customer-oriented and/or market-oriented Deshpande et al., 1993, Day, 1992, Day, 1994, Harris and Ogbonna, 2001, Kohli and Jaworski, 1990, Kohli et al., 1993, Narver and Slater, 1990 and Webb et al., 2000, innovative as entrepreneurs Covin and Slevin, 1989, Drucker, 1985, Jefferson and Rawski, 1994, Morris and Paul, 1987 and Tan, 2001, as well as learning-oriented (Baker and Sinkula, 1999; Hunt and Morgan, 1996, Rames and Steger, 2000, Sinkula, 1994, Sinkula et al., 1997 and Zahra et al., 2000). The advantages of market orientation, entrepreneurship, and learning orientation to organizations have been evidently documented in Western economies. However, there has been relatively little research into the extent to which these critical SCA-enhancing practices in emerging economies such as Eastern Europe, previous Soviet republics, and China (Hooley et al., 2000). Replication studies of market orientation, learning orientation, and entrepreneurship are warranted because if these constructs are reliable and valid, they should also be applicable in different environments and economies Bhuian, 1998 and Hooley et al., 2000. In addition, despite voluminous discussion on each of these three constructs, there has not been an empirical study that interrelates market orientation from the perspective of cultural and processes/activities, with entrepreneurial orientation, and learning orientation, nor discusses these issues in a context of the emerging economy. This study may also answer the call for more research on entrepreneurship by Hurley and Hult (1998). The present study, in particular, utilized data from China's emerging economy to test and validate the scales of market orientation, entrepreneurship, and learning orientation. The findings indicated that current state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China, to a rather large extent, have adopted both market- and learning-oriented strategies, with an emphasis on corporate entrepreneurship. In addition, those with a higher level of market orientation are reported to be more learning-oriented, place greater emphasis on entrepreneurship, and tend to achieve higher organizational performance than their counterparts that are with a lower level of market orientation. Overall, this study extends the literature by simultaneously exploring the relationships between market orientation and other critical constructs, such as learning organization, entrepreneurship, and organizational performance.

This study attempts to evaluate the business practices and their resulting performance of organizations in an emerging economy. Specifically, the survey data from the SOEs in China were utilized to examine quantitatively the extent to which the organizations have adopted market orientation, market-based organizational learning, and corporate entrepreneurship and their impact on performance. Results showed that current SOEs are comparatively learning-oriented, market-oriented, and with an emphasis on entrepreneurship as well. More importantly, it is found that higher level of market orientation organizations tend to be more learning-oriented, show more emphasis on entrepreneurship, and achieve higher level of organizational performance, than lower level of market orientation counterparts (see Fig. 2 for a pictorial presentation).The present study contributed the literature in a couple of ways. First, to the best of our knowledge, it is the first study, though in exploratory nature, that comprehensively investigated Chinese SOEs' marketing practices including organizational learning, market orientation, and entrepreneurship simultaneously. Second, it is found that organizations may be both market- and entrepreneurship-oriented at the same time, and that higher level of market orientation tends to be related to more emphasis on entrepreneurship. This is critical from a managerial perspective because market orientation and entrepreneurship have been treated independently and even as two contentious strategic issues (cf. Covin and Slevin, 1989, Hunt and Morgan, 1996, Slater and Narver, 2000 and Wood et al., 2000). This finding contends that a company should identify those who have an entrepreneurial orientation and further train them to acquire the market orientation. Should the company be able to develop a team of employees with the combination of both market orientation and entrepreneurship, it would be in a stronger position to compete in a volatile and transient economy. After China enters the WTO, the government will be compelled to allow more open market and economy in PRC. SOEs are therefore in a position to differentiate themselves from those who are lacking behind in their market orientation, entrepreneurship, and a learning culture and be more competitive in an environment where the success of a business relies mainly on their strategies and operations. In addition, the findings of this study further support the theory that the market orientation, entrepreneurship, and a learning culture of a company would enhance its performance. 5.1. Limitations and future research The current study has several limitations and calls for future research efforts. First, the sample of this study is only from a particular emerging economy — China. The results, thus, may not be generalizable to other emerging economies. Given the importance of the topics of emerging economies (see a special issue on emerging economies in Academy of Management Journal in June 2000), more efforts are needed to validate our findings in other transitional economies such as Eastern Europe and previous Soviet republics. Second, although this study utilized different scales of market orientation Deshpande and Farley, 1998 and Kohli and Jaworski, 1990 and found rather convergent results, another scale developed by Narver and Slater (1990), which is also quite popular in measuring market orientation, was missed in this study. In addition, we measured organization performance only from the perspective of the marketing program dynamism. As such, future research is needed to use other market performance measures such as sales turnover, market share, and return on investment. Finally, this study did not elaborate the constructs and the concepts of entrepreneurship and innovation. We concur with Hurley and Hult (1998) and call for more research on the nature and distinctions of entrepreneurship and innovation in market-driven organizations.