The role of strategic orientation on customer knowledge management and dynamic marketing capabilities towards organizational innovation

Abstract

Organizational innovation has been considered as one of the main drivers of value creation, prerequisite for market success, and often for the survival of the company, particularly in high technology industries. However, strategic orientation is seen as principles that direct to achieve superior innovation. In this regard, although Miles and Snow’s strategic orientations has been one of the most important and intensively studied typologies throughout the world, evidence on its particular propositions is not clear enough. The direct and indirect impact of strategic orientation on organizational innovation was influenced by certain environmental and organizational contexts, as well as other dynamic capabilities such as customer knowledge management and dynamic marketing capabilities. To that end, studies carried out on strategic orientation typologies and other dynamic capabilities have usually reported mixed results. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the inter-relationship among strategic orientations (prospector, defender, analyzer, reactor), customer knowledge management, dynamic marketing capabilities and organizational innovation. Particularly, this study addresses this gap by investigating the mediating effect of customer knowledge management and dynamic marketing capabilities on the relationship between strategic orientations and organizational innovation in Jordanian pharmaceutical and health care industry firms. Nine hypotheses have been developed to test the proposed model and structural equation modelling (SEM) was applied to test the research hypotheses. The study used the quantitative method via questionnaire survey involving all Jordanian pharmaceutical and healthcare firms registered in Amman Chamber of Industry 2019. Using simple random sampling technique, 242 survey respondents were analysed via PLS-SEM to address the research questions. The chief executive officers (CEOs) and other top managers in pharmaceutical and health care industry were respondents for this study. They were considered as the most knowledgeable and expert people regarding the firms’ strategic orientations and organizational innovation. The results of the study found that strategic orientations (prospector, defender, analyzer, reactor) have significant direct effect on organizational innovation. Furthermore, the findings confirmed the mediating effect of customer knowledge management and dynamic marketing capabilities on the relationship between strategic orientations and organizational innovation. Academically, the results of the study have implications as the study expands the knowledge in the areas of strategic orientations and organizational innovation. Practically, top managers could use the findings as a guide to achieve organizational innovation (process, product and administrative) then more customer knowledge management and dynamic marketing capabilities should be devoted to strategic orientations activities, such as learning about customer needs and wants as well competitor moves, ensuring that information regarding competitors is shared within the organisation. The findings could also serve to satisfy the customers’ requirements, and support the leverage of other benefits through customer linking and market sensing to guide the process of innovation.