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Editorial verdict
Methodologically sound academic study with notable limitations — the positive effects of market and technological orientation on performance are statistically supported, but reliance on subjective self-reported measures and a single-country sample constrain generalisability; treat the moderator findings as directional rather than definitive.
Executive summary
This study addresses the relationship between strategic orientations — specifically market orientation (MO) and technological orientation (TO) — and organisational performance (OP) within the technological business services (TBS) sector, incorporating organisational culture (OC) and human resources (HR) as moderating variables. The authors argue, grounded in resource-based theory, that both orientations positively influence performance, while OC and HR significantly moderate these relationships. Using questionnaire data from 689 Polish TBS providers across IT, engineering, and technical research sectors, the study employs multiple regression analysis to test eight hypotheses. Key findings indicate that MO exerts a stronger positive effect on OP (β = 0.412) than TO (β = 0.295) even within technology-focused firms. Low HR weakens both MO-OP and TO-OP relationships, while high HR strengthens the MO-OP relationship but paradoxically weakens the TO-OP relationship. Strong OC reduces the effect of both orientations on performance, with the dampening effect approximately three times larger for MO than TO. The authors conclude that strategic orientations must be considered alongside internal organisational assets, and that even technology-dominant firms benefit more from customer-focused orientation than from technological emphasis alone.
Key insights
- 1Market orientation demonstrated a stronger positive relationship with organisational performance (β = 0.412) than technological orientation (β = 0.295) even among firms whose core activity is technology-based business services, suggesting customer-centricity outweighs technological capability emphasis in driving performance in this sector.
- 2Organisational culture acts as a double-edged moderator: low OC weakens MO-OP relationships while slightly amplifying TO-OP relationships, whereas high OC reduces both relationships but dampens MO-OP approximately three times more strongly than TO-OP.
- 3Human resources exhibit asymmetric moderating effects — weak HR management uniformly weakens both MO-OP and TO-OP relationships, while strong HR investment strengthens MO-OP but simultaneously reduces the TO-OP relationship, implying that HR development redirects performance gains toward market-facing activities rather than technological ones.
Practical takeaways
- In technological business service firms, the simultaneous presence of high OC and high HR produces the strongest MO-OP relationship (coefficient 0.465), indicating that internal organisational assets amplify the returns from market-oriented strategies more than from technology-oriented strategies.
- Firms operating with low levels of both HR and OC show comparable and reduced performance effects from both orientations (MO: 0.329, TO: 0.319), suggesting that neglect of internal assets erodes the competitive value of either strategic orientation without clearly favouring one over the other.
Frameworks mentioned
Resource-Based View
A strategic management framework attributing sustained competitive advantage to firm-specific, difficult-to-imitate internal resources and capabilities, used here to theorise the role of organisational culture and human resources as moderating assets.
References
- Journal of Marketing (1990).The effect of a market orientation on business profitability.
- Journal of Marketing (1993).Market Orientation: Antecedents and Consequences.
- Journal of Marketing (1990).Market Orientation: The Construct, Research Propositions, and Managerial Implications.
- Journal of Marketing Research (1997).Strategic orientation of the firm and new product performance.
- Journal of Management (1991).Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage.
- Journal of Applied Psychology (2019).A meta-analytic test of organizational culture's association with elements of an organization's system and its relative predictive validity on organizational outcomes.
- Journal of Business Research (2016).Strategic orientations and performance: A configurational perspective.
- International Journal of Management Reviews (2011).Strategic Orientations in Management Literature: Three Approaches to Understanding the Interaction between Market, Technology, Entrepreneurial and Learning Orientations.
- Journal of Marketing Research (1981).Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error.
- Guilford Press (2018).Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach.
- Strategic Management Journal (2019).The complementarity of strategic orientations: A meta-analytic synthesis and theory extension.
- Strategic Management Journal (2008).Market orientation, job satisfaction, product quality, and firm performance: evidence from China.
- Edward Elgar Publishing (2021).Innovation Orientation in Business Services. Scope, Scale and Measurement.
Source & Provenance
plos
Borodako, Berbeka, Rudnicki, Lopaciuk-Gonczaryk
July 1, 2022
Research Study
Europe
Original source metadata is preserved. AI analysis is generated separately.
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