Listening in and out: Listening to customers and employees to strengthen an integrated market-oriented system

Abstract

While volumes of research have been dedicated to listening to customers as part of a market-oriented strategy, very little attention has been given to the mechanisms that disseminate the information internally to the employees who need it to meet and exceed customer requirements. A multidisciplinary exploratory study was initiated to investigate how an organization's listening environment facilitates both organizational and employee outcomes. Building on theory from marketing, management, and communications, the impact employee beliefs about the organization's listening environment was shown to relate to both the external market orientation and the individual's performance and commitment to the organization. Focusing on a small number of representative variable in lexicon theoretical linkages, a structural equation model was tested utilizing managerial data across a wide range of management levels of a major retail organization, as a preliminary foray into a potential multiple disciplinary research program.