یکپارچه سازی مشتری مداری، کارآفرینی شرکت ها، و جهت گیری یادگیری در سازمان های در حال گذار: یک مطالعه تجربی

The paper addresses the issue of interrelationships between market orientation, corporate entrepreneurship, and learning orientation in the context of emerging economies. These three constructs have drawn an increasing level of interest in both marketing and management fields as organizations face challenges in a volatile environment. With a national sample of state-owned enterprises in China, the present study simultaneously tests potential relations between these structural constructs and their relationships with the organizational outcome that is reflected with marketing program dynamism. The findings of this study indicate that: (1) sampled state-owned enterprises demonstrate a higher level of changes in organizational outcome resulted from a stronger customer orientation, corporate entrepreneurship, or learning orientation; (2) learning orientation fully or partially mediates the impact of customer orientation and corporate entrepreneurship on outcome; (3) state-owned enterprises with foreign partnership have a higher level of customer orientation, entrepreneurship, and learning orientation; and (4) state-owned enterprises in the service sector have a higher level of customer orientation.

Scholars across disciplines have recently engaged in discussions of customer orientation, entrepreneurship, and the learning organization. First, customer orientation is one of the core aspects of marketing in the strategic marketing literature Kohli & Jaworski, 1990, McGee & Spiro, 1988, Webster, 1992a and Webster, 1992b, together with goal attainment, namely objectives and profitability, and integrated marketing organization. A number of scales have been developed for measuring market orientation and its relationship with performance Deshpandé et al., 1993, Deshpandé et al., 2000, Kohli & Jaworski, 1990 and Narver & Slater, 1990. Second, corporate entrepreneurship has been discussed in a number of studies mainly in the management field Barringer & Bluedorn, 1999, Covin & Slevin, 1989, Covin & Slevin, 1991, Dess et al., 1997, Drucker, 1985, Mitchell & Smith, 2000 and Morris & Paul, 1987. Corporate entrepreneurship focuses on experimentation involving innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactiveness Dickson, 1992, Jones & Butler, 1992, Morris & Paul, 1987, Slater & Narver, 2000 and Smart & Conant, 1994. Entrepreneurship is so critical to marketing discipline that Murray (1981) asserts that marketing is the home for the entrepreneurial process in organizations. Third, the topic of learning organization has drawn considerable interest in the literature Baker & Sinkula, 1999, Hunt & Morgan, 1996, Hurley & Hult, 1998, Menon et al., 1999, Ramus & Steger, 2000, Sinkula, 1994 and Zahra et al., 2000. Competitive advantage theory (Morgan & Hunt, 1995) treats organizational learning as an important but complex resource that can generate competitive advantage for a firm in dynamic and turbulent markets. Dickson (1992) acclaims that the ability to learn faster than competitors is the only source of sustainable competitive advantage. Slater and Narver (1995) propose, but do not empirically test, that market orientation and entrepreneurial drive provide a cultural foundation for organizational learning, which, in turn, enables an organization to achieve a higher level of performance and better customer value. Farrell (2000) tests both constructs of market orientation and organizational learning. This study incorporates an additional construct of corporate entrepreneurship and empirically and simultaneously tests all three constructs in the context of emerging economies. China, being the largest emerging economy in the world, has become a preferred platform for research for its seemingly smooth transformation (Deshpandé & Farley, 2000). The present study differs from others in three ways. (1) Our focus on the market-driven public sector—state-owned enterprises—broadens knowledge about China and helps test the applicability of concepts beyond a free-market boundary. State-owned enterprises have been the tradition and continue to be important for the Chinese economy. As such, research on how to build successful state-owned enterprises in the current fast-changing market situation should be of great concern to managers and policy makers in China. Our study extends previous research on state-owned enterprises by examining key determinants of organizational outcome, such as customer orientation, corporate entrepreneurship, and learning orientation. With a national sample of Chinese state-owned enterprises, we found support that organizations with a customer orientation, corporate entrepreneurship, or a learning orientation tend to have higher levels of outcome that is reflected with marketing program dynamism. In addition, enterprises with state's sole ownership have shown a lower level of customer orientation, corporate entrepreneurship, and learning orientation than their state-foreign counterparts. State-owned enterprises in the service industry have a higher level of customer orientation than those in the manufacturing industry. (2) Our research is among the incipient investigations that intend to integrate and empirically test the cultural antecedents of learning orientation based on Slater and Narver's (1995) original theoretical model. Our findings indicate an association between cultural constructs, such as customer orientation and corporate entrepreneurship, and learning orientation. Furthermore, learning orientation mediates the impact of these two cultural constructs on the organizational outcomes. As such, this study provides validity to Slater and Narver's model as well as contrasts these key concepts in both transitional and developed economies. It also serves to answer the call of Hooley et al. (2000) for replication studies on customer orientation, entrepreneurship, and learning orientation in emerging economies, such as Eastern Europe, previous Soviet republics, and China. (3) There have been two critical studies of customer orientation conducted in China—Deshpandé and Farley (2000) and Sin et al. (2000). This study extends the research stream in both theoretical and methodological domains. Theoretically, both Deshpandé and Farley (2000) and Sin et al. (2000) examine the direct relationship between market orientation and performance. Our study investigates further direct and mediating relationships between customer orientation and dynamism of marketing programs undertaken in Chinese firms. In terms of methodology, previous studies utilized internal consistency and exploratory factor analysis techniques to validate their constructs. While these techniques may help establish scale reliability, they are sometimes misleading in determining scale convergent and discriminant validity (Gerbing & Anderson, 1988). An alternative and more cogent approach—confirmatory factor analysis in structural equation modeling—is therefore adopted to ensure achieving such validity (Gerbing & Anderson, 1988). Customer orientation is a set of beliefs that customer needs and satisfaction are the priority of an organization (Deshpandé et al., 2000). It focuses on dynamic interactions between the organization and customers as well as competitors in the market and its internal stakeholders. Moreover, Deshpandé et al. treat customer orientation and market orientation as interchangeable concepts. Corporate entrepreneurship refers to the organizational process of risk taking, innovativeness, and proactiveness Covin & Slevin, 1991 and Morris & Paul, 1987. Liu, Dubinsky, and Shi (2000) discovered in an exploratory study that corporate entrepreneurship likely fosters an organizational culture that produces capacity to proactively enter new markets and introduce new products in a turbulent and fast-changing environment. Learning orientation is a set of organizational values that defines the ability to create, disseminate, and utilize knowledge (Sinkula, Baker, & Noordewier, 1997). Learning can be considered as a process whereby members in an organization are stimulated to continually strive for new approaches and acquire, as well as share, knowledge consequential to interactions with environments Argyris, 1977 and Argyris, 1991. One may measure a learning orientation in a global learning organization by examining those values including commitment to learning, open-mindedness, and shared vision Day, 1992 and Senge, 1990.

This empirical study demonstrates simultaneously the interrelationship among customer orientation, corporate entrepreneurship, and learning orientation in the context of transitional Chinese economy. Results show that state-owned enterprises in China with a customer orientation, corporate entrepreneurship, or learning orientation attain better organizational outcome in the form of marketing program dynamism. Customer orientation and corporate entrepreneurship are cultural antecedents of organizational learning, and learning orientation partially or fully mediates the influences of customer orientation and corporate entrepreneurship on outcome. Although several previous studies have examined the relationship of market orientation and business performance in firms operating in emerging economies, such as Russia and China, the present study further demonstrates the significant mediating effect of learning orientation for a customer-oriented organization to attain better outcome that is reflected in marketing program dynamism. As China prepares to enter the World Trade Organization (WTO), the government is committed to reducing tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers to foreign firms and to further opening up the domestic market of the manufacturing and service sectors in particular (e.g., Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, 2000 and Yu, 2000). Companies are therefore in a position to compete in an environment where success depends mainly on strategy. It is recommended on the basis of this study that, to achieve optimal organizational outcome, strategies for improving and/or enhancing customer orientation and corporate entrepreneurship should be integrated with those that encourage a learning orientation. The past two decades have witnessed significant changes in China from a centrally planned economy to a more market-oriented one. However, as long as China remains a socialist nation, state-owned enterprises will continue to comprise a dominant part of its economic activities. Although the benefits derived from a WTO membership to the Chinese economy apparently outweigh the costs, especially in the long run, reduction of government protection and loss of monopolistic position mean greater challenges to the state-owned enterprises. Most at risk are those in automobile, hi-tech, agriculture, telecom, and financial services industries Lin et al., 1998 and Yu, 2000. The finding of this study reveals that the state-owned enterprises in the services sector seem to have evolved more toward being similar to those in a market economy than their manufacturing counterparts. The higher level of customer orientation, corporate entrepreneurship, and learning orientation should allow firms be in a more competitive position for attaining better performance. Learning orientation of an organization entails knowledge creation and cultivation from all levels within that organization. Therefore, individual staff are to be given certain levels of autonomy and accountability as well as more opportunities to advance their own knowledge base. Fundamentally, state-owned enterprises are being transformed into a format that is familiar to the developed economy in that they have a corporate governance structure for making viable business decisions. The transformation of ownership structure in state-owned enterprises allows managers as well as employees to take a more active role in business planning and operations to ensure profitability. The higher level of customer orientation found in the partnership firms confirms this assertion. With declining governmental or monopolistic protection in an emerging economy, state-owned enterprises are compelled to undergo more radical changes and tend to adopt these measures more vigorously as a result of the more turbulent environment and keener incoming competition. In terms of research potential, they thus provide a valuable platform with rich resources for future framework development of these interrelated constructs in the knowledge economy.