From Customer-Oriented Strategy to Organizational Financial Performance: The Role of Human Resource Management and Customer-Linking Capability

Abstract

Drawing on the organizational capabilities literature, the authors developed and tested a model of how supportive human resource management (HRM) improved firms' financial performance perceived by marketing managers through fostering the implementation of a customer-oriented strategy. Customer-linking capability, which is the capability in managing close customer relationships, indicated the implementation of the customer-oriented strategy. Data collected from two emerging economies - China and Hungary - established that supportive HRM partially mediated the relationship between customer-oriented strategy and customer-linking capability. Customer-linking capability further explained how supp..