شناخت نقش همکاری بازاریابی - خرید در بازارهای صنعتی: مورد روسیه

This study aims to investigate the role of interfunctional collaboration between marketing and purchasing functions in industrial companies. Interfunctional collaboration is considered as a measure of the internal alignment and partnership between departments in the firm, which in turn contributes to the creation of sustainable advantages via improved external partnerships and facilitating demand chain integration. We test the impact of customer orientation as well as the interactions between departments (specifically marketing and purchasing) as collaboration antecedents, and analyze the direct impact of marketing–purchasing collaboration on business performance. The model is tested on a sample of 148 industrial companies in Russia with two key respondents in each firm, incorporating the purchasing as well as the marketing perspective. The results show that marketing–purchasing collaboration mediates the effects of interfunctional interaction as well as customer orientation on business performance. Alternative model testing shows that the direct effects of these antecedent constructs on performance are non-significant in the context of Russian industrial companies.

In the current business environment characterized by increasing competitive pressures, externally oriented functions of the firm face serious challenges, especially by striking a sustainable balance between the aims of companies and their business partners (Achrol, 1997, Achrol & Kotler, 1999 and Ford et al., 2003). Customers become increasingly demanding, forcing companies to increase their ability to interact collaboratively. This trend recognizes the importance of sustaining the performance of both a focal company and its network partners (Clarke, 2006 and Wind, 2008). Thus, multifaceted goals put emphasis on achieving both operational efficiency within the firm as well as market effectiveness through the optimal combination of resources and knowledge of the firm and its network partners ( Cox, 2004 and Mouzas, 2006). Such thinking is in line with arguments from the resource dependence theory ( Casciaro & Piskorski, 2005a, Casciaro & Piskorski, 2005b and Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978) and the literature on business networks ( Anderson et al., 1994, Matthyssens et al., 2009 and Möller & Halinen, 1999). Achievement of immediate, operational results within a firm may lead to both a dramatic decrease in the firm's ability to adjust to future challenges ( Ford & McDowell, 1999, Ritter, 1999 and Ritter & Gemünden, 2003), and a reduction in its ability to retain competitive advantages via successfully mobilizing other business partners ( Ehret, 2004, Eng, 2006, Mouzas, 2006 and Mouzas & Naudé, 2007). Achieving a balance between focal company goals and those of interaction partners in complex business networks has previously been linked to developing interfunctional collaboration within a firm, i.e. creating internal cooperative approaches and internal strategic partnerships ( Campbell, 1998 and Piercy, 2009). Existing research highlights the demand for improvement of interdepartmental collaboration: “the logic is that strategic external relationships (with customers, supplier and partners) should be mirrored in strategic internal relationships…” (Piercy, 2009, p.857). More specifically, a shifting focus on interfunctional collaboration can be perceived: from investigating collaborations between ‘neighbouring’ functions, e.g. marketing and sales, or purchasing and operations, to collaborations between boundary spanning functions (Piercy, 2009). Such functions are responsible for the coordination of external relationships, specifically customer relationships and supplier relationships (Ivens, Pardo, & Tunisini, 2009). However, while research has suggested the importance of the integration of boundary spanning functions such as purchasing and marketing (Sheth, Sharma, & Gopalkrishnan, 2009), there is not enough empirical evidence regarding this issue and its interplay with firm performance. Our study uses this research challenge as its starting point by focusing on marketing–purchasing collaboration. Marketing–purchasing collaboration represents a specific case of interfunctional collaboration which has been shown to be an important component of the behavioral aspect of both market orientation (Auh & Menguc, 2005 and Narver & Slater, 1990) and demand chain integration (Jüttner et al., 2007, Lambert & Cooper, 2000 and Sheth et al., 2000). The challenge is therefore for companies to instigate marketing–purchasing collaboration: to develop internal configurations of different functions which will help them to identify, maintain and develop external business relationships with crucial partners in the business network (Jüttner et al., 2007 and Kahn & Mentzer, 1998). Improving external business relationships requires several distinctive antecedents with regard to the marketing–purchasing collaboration within a firm. Firstly, in line with requirements identified as part of the concept of market orientation, the company needs to develop a deep understanding of its business partners, especially buying companies (Da Silva et al., 2002, Danneels, 2003, Hsieh et al., 2008, Kohli & Jaworski, 1990 and Narver & Slater, 1990). Such customer orientation is linked to the essence of the marketing function (Awuah, 2008, Brady & Cronin, 2001 and Deshpandé et al., 1993) and is also in line with the demand chain integration concept (Jüttner, Gosell, & Christopher, 2006). In order to best serve customers in a mutually beneficial way, a company needs to use and transform certain resources (Alderson, 1965, Alderson & Martin, 1965 and Prenkert & Hallen, 2006). However, the company does not possess all of the resources and competences itself and is thus dependent on its supply network (Paulraj & Chen, 2007 and Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). Consequently, the second antecedent important for aligning external business relationships lies in the interactions of internal boundary-spanning functions (Eng, 2006, Henneberg et al., 2009 and Piercy, 2009). Thus, the company needs to develop interfunctional interactions which, together with customer orientation, provide the collaboration between marketing and purchasing which is hypothesized to be beneficial for firm performance. Besides our contribution of clarifying the antecedents and consequences of interfunctional marketing–purchasing collaboration, we specifically focus on the setting of Russian firms. The importance of internal marketing–purchasing collaboration represents a particular challenge for transitional economies, such as Russia, as firms have not had sufficient time to develop either the competences to relate to multiple business partners in complex networks, nor the capabilities to foster interaction and collaboration between externally facing functions such as purchasing and marketing (Peng & Luo, 2000 and Piercy, 2009). The levels of complexity and dynamism of the new economic environments in transitional countries are in fact characterized by challenges to established competition rules, resulting in “collapsing capabilities” (Atuahene-Gima, Li, & De Luca, 2006, p. 360). In case of Russia, after the collapse of the planned economy and the dissolution of existing economic ties between companies and whole value-creating systems, firms had to adapt to the newly formed business environment, while developing new internal capabilities at the same time. Lorentz and Ghauri (2010) observe that “despite the recent positive development in Russian market, the heritage of the centralized planning oriented command economy is still evident” (p. 243). Numerous studies have focused on the challenges of Russian business culture and networking practices, which often provide examples of inefficient and opportunistic interactions (Jansson et al., 2007, Kouchtch & Afanasiev, 2001, Menkhaus et al., 2004 and Salmi, 1996). Overcoming such obstacles, as Johanson (2007) states, required significant time and resource investments, and was based on the development of decentralized and mutual planning capabilities by individual firms. In fact, “interpersonal networks are important in uncertain and unstable economic environments, as interpersonal trust mitigates risk and reduces the influence of turbulent macro-environmental changes” (Butler & Purchase, 2008, p. 531). Our research is embedded in these discussions and is aimed at providing insights via an empirical study of Russian industrial firms, identifying antecedents and performance outcomes of marketing–purchasing collaboration. In addition to informing current managerial practice in transitional economies, specifically Russia, and thus providing insights into the functioning of often overlooked business networks outside Western countries (e.g. Anderson et al., 1994, Håkansson & Ford, 2002 and Ritter et al., 2004, for an exception using non-Western data see Chan, 2000 and Peng & Luo, 2000), our research contributes to addressing some important research gaps, namely clarifying the role of interfunctional collaboration of marketing and purchasing as crucial example of boundary spanning functions. We thus contribute to the stock of knowledge on demand chain integration and business relationships in networks (Jüttner et al., 2007, Lambert & Cooper, 2000 and Sheth et al., 2000). The paper is structured as follows: we first present the theoretical basis of the study and key concepts to be considered, and then propose a nomological model describing the key research assumptions as well as the underlying hypotheses. We present the results from a dyadic dataset of 148 Russian companies and, using structural equation modeling, propose key implications for practitioners. Finally, we identify further areas for potential research.

This study examined the extent to which purchasing and marketing managers collaborate in order to achieve superior business performance. We used data from 148 paired respondents from Russian industrial companies so as to overcome the problems commonly associated with common methods bias. As hypothesized, our results provide evidence for the role that both antecedents play in determining marketing–purchasing collaboration, as well as for the mediating effect that customer orientation has between marketing–purchasing interaction and marketing–purchasing collaboration. Furthermore, our empirical results demonstrate that marketing–purchasing collaboration has a significant and positive effect on business performance. This finding supports recent suggestions that there exist dual relationships between how active and influential a marketing department is, and the development of a customer orientation (Verhoef & Leeflang, 2009). Our results are in line with findings by Han et al. (1998) which show that having a customer orientation positively impacts both directly and indirectly on performance, with the indirect (mediated) path being the dominant one. However, this effect was not robust in our study as the extended model did not corroborate this positive relationship. This may indicate that some of the hypothesized relationships which are based on a nomological model that was developed from research mostly pertaining to developed/Western economies do not yet adequately describe the transitional state of the Russian economy but refer to an ‘end-state’ of development of market-based exchanges in an economy. As such, this qualifies Slater and Narver's (1994) findings that the business environment does not affect the link between customer orientation and business performance. Tests with different datasets show the robustness of these results but also indicate questions for further research. Direct relationships between customer orientation and marketing–purchasing interaction on business performance were not generally supported, thus underlining the importance of marketing–purchasing collaboration as a mediating construct in achieving business performance. However, some of the alternative models provide an indication that there exists a direct link between customer orientation and firm performance (the path estimates on several data models were only just not significant) which complements the mediated effect that customer orientation has via fostering more interfunctional alignment. These ambivalent results suggest that additional research needs to be undertaken in order to understand the development of these direct vis-à-vis indirect (mediated) relationships of customer orientation to company performance, e.g. by a longitudinal study which takes into account the changing transitional characteristics of the Russian economy. Furthermore, intra-industry datasets may find different relationships depending on the developmental stage of these industries in adapting to market-based exchanges. This would require larger datasets to be gathered, where the effects of control variables such as industry, company size, or the length of time that a company has been in business can be assessed. Our analyses also show that different datasets using multiple respondents can be used to cross-validate the testing of the nomological model for robustness. These tests outline some limitations of our research, namely, the fact that although a dyadic dataset improves the explained variance within the overall model, the fit indices, especially χ2, become problematic. Furthermore, we use an average score method to derive dyadic data. Further research is necessary which also uses the fit and directionality information inherent in dyadic data ( Deshpandé et al., 1993 and Van Bruggen et al., 2002).