To gain competitive advantages, companies expect their sales forces to execute selling strategies consistent with their market-oriented culture. Drawing on understandings of market orientation, organizational communication, and role theory, the author develops an integrated framework demonstrating the performance impact of individual market orientation (IMO) through formal and informal communications. This article also considers the moderating effects of role ambiguity and role conflict in the IMO-performance relationship. Five propositions are developed to bring new insights to these complex and important relationships and to encourage future research into the nature of frontline communication in the implementation of market orientation.Market orientation (MO), also known as organizational culture, provides norms that guide a firm's marketing implementation process in order to effectively create superior customer value and continually respond to market needs (Narver and Slater 1990;Slater and Narver 1995). In the past two decades, research in this area has made considerable contributions to the conceptualization of MO (Kohli and Jaworski 1990), its measurement (Deshpandé and Farley 1998; Kohli, Jaworski, and Kumar 1993), its impact on organizational performance and overall business strategies (Haugland, Myrtveit, and Nygaard 2007;Kirca, Jayachandran, and Bearden 2005), and its impact on a firm's relations with stakeholders (Ferrell et al. 2010). However, although prior research has greatly advanced understanding of MO antecedents and performance outcomes, there are important voids in the literature.With regard to the underlying mechanisms that link MO and organizational performance, research has unveiled several mediators: organizational innovativeness (Im and Workman 2004;Ledwith and O'Dwyer 2009), organizational learning (Gebhardt, Carpenter, andSherry 2006;Hult, Ketchen, and Slater 2005), operational efficiency (Chang et al. 1999), and relationship commitment (Taylor et al. 2008). A successful MO requires an effective information dissemination process by which a market-oriented culture is transferred and innovative ideas in response to changes in customer needs are communicated (Homburg, Krohmer, and Workman 2004;Homburg and Pflesser 2000). However, prior research has not thoroughly examined the mediating role of communications in MO implementation. Importantly, frontline employees, such as salespeople, play a critical role in this process because of their privilege of interacting with customers. They learn constantly from the marketplace, and communicate the received information about the firm's offerings throughout the organization to keep pace with customers' changing needs. A combination of formal and informal communications is advantageous to salespeople to maximize the quality and quantity of the market information (Maltz and Kohli 1996). A market-oriented salesperson, therefore, should capitalize on different forms of communication (i.e., formal and informal) to exchange information between custome...

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Purpose This study aims to investigate to what extent salespeople are satisfied, dissatisfied or neither with various aspects of their job in ways predicted by the “two-factor model” assocating satisfaction with recognition and personal growth but not “hygiene factors.” It further investigates which aspects of the salesperson’s job are most strongly associated with commitment to the organization – or intention to leave. Design/methodology/approach Interviewers gathered data from 176 salespeople in 154 companies. Those data were analyzed to identify aspects of the salesperson’s job that are satisfiers, dissatisfiers or prompt indifference. The data were then correlated with the extent to which salespeople expressed commitment to their organization – and the extent to which they expressed likelihood of leaving their current job. Findings Aspects of the salesperson’s job do cluster into categories associated with the two-factor theory: satisfiers, dissatisfiers and other “hygiene factors” that are neither. However, two deviations from the theory appear. Pay is a satisfier, contrary to the assumptions behind the model, and factors beyond those intrinsic to the salesperson are also satisfiers. Supporting relevance of the theory for salespeople, however, is the strong association of recognition/personal growth aspects of the job positively with organizational commitment and negatively with intention to leave. Research limitations/implications Although the data come from a convenience sample of salespeople, the results can be useful. For example, consideration of new products and of mergers should take into account their impact on salesperson satisfaction and dissatisfaction as motivational issues. Originality/value This study is broader in focus than previous work relating the two-factor theory to salespeople, providing more confidence in the generalizability of the results.

Objective: To ascertain the gender distribution across public health boards in Australia. Design & Setting: Analysis of data and information obtained from a cross sectional audit of online publicly listed health boards within Australia from October to December 2019. Results: The majority of public health boards have close to equal representation of women as board members however women are underrepresented in Chair roles. Victoria has significantly more women on health boards, whereas New South Wales has significantly less women on health boards and in Chair positions.  Conclusions: Further efforts are required to drive gender equity in senior leadership roles in public health boards across Australia