External And Internal Customer Managers: Differences In Perception And Decision-Making In The Marketing And Human Resource Dyad

Abstract

Interfunctional relations and their implications for organizational effectiveness is increasingly becoming a major strategic issue. Marketing and human resources (HR) are concerned with building relationships; marketing is the function charged with managing relationships with external customer, whilst HR is the function obligated to the task of managing relationships internally. Indeed, there seems to have been a certain crossover between these functions as issues such as internal marketing (cf. George 1990) and the marketing of the HR function (cf. Price 1993) have received attention of late. This article explores the Marketing-HR dyad from the perspective of problem perception. How a problem is perceived determines to a substantial degree the subsequent course of problem solving action. The concept of decision-making context is introduced as the ratio of problem types encountered. To differentiate managers on an individual level the construct of perception type is expounded. The study finds significant differences in perceptions between the marketing and HR, and between different perception types. It is argued that a better understanding of the differences in the decision-making processes between key functions is essential if the hope of enhancing organizational effectiveness through inter-functional cooperation is not to remain an elusive Shangri-La.