Learning Culture as a Mediator of the Influence of an Individual's Knowledge on Market Orientation

Abstract

The real power of organisational culture is manifested through its normative impact on the behaviour of individual members (e.g. salespeople). Organisational culture's influence on relationship development increases through the customer-oriented behaviour of salespeople. But, considering those future behaviours of salespeople implies internal processes such as reflection, intuition, or interpretation, something that makes the ‘individual's knowledge’ indispensable. This paper examines the relative importance and significance of these behaviours (i.e., automatic and conscious knowledge) on ‘learning culture’, and their effects on market orientation, through an empirical investigation of 269 Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in two sectors (the Spanish optometry sector and the Spanish telecommunications sector) using structural equation modelling validated by factor analysis. The conclusions indicate that these behaviours nourish the company's capacity (learning culture) to move from a given situation to the desired situation of market orientation.