Corporate marketing leaders: the key attributes

Abstract

Purpose – In their boundary‐spanning role, marketing managers are often charged with managing cross‐functional teams and collaborative work groups. Although this interfunctional coordination is key to organizational performance many marketing managers run into resistance owing to leadership styles and stereotypes held about other functional departments. The aim of this paper is to understand the leadership qualities important to the marketing function and compare them to those found important in other business functions.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from two multinational organizations. Over 1,000 employees from six functional departments (engineering, information technology, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and research and development rated the importance of 45 leadership attributes to high‐performing leadership in their particular business function.Findings – A total of nine dimensions of leadership are uncovered and four of them are deemed more important in marketing compared to so...