Kutu-Adu, Solomon Gladstone (2017) Aligning internal market orientation (IMO) with market orientation (MO) to impact performance in the banking sector in Ghana. Doctoral thesis, London Metropolitan University.
The study is the first in Sub-Saharan Africa to use the aligned effects of IMO/MO to determine their relationship with employee/customer satisfaction in the financial services industry. The pioneering studies of Lings and Greenley on internal market orientation (IMO) in the 2000s and that of Kohli and Jaworski experience enormous investigation empirically. Although some reasonable amount of studies on the above constructs have been undertaken within the newly developed and developing economies, there have been little attempt at exploring the alignment of the two concepts, in terms of their relationship with organizational performance, particularly in the services sector. To address this research gap, a multidimensional construct describing the five managerial behaviours associated with internal marketing conceptualized as IMO in alignment with market orientation (MO) has been tested to see how their integration relates with employee/customer satisfaction. The first stage involved a qualitative study to gain a deeper and better understanding of the IMO/MO constructs and their implementation in the commercial and universal banking sector in Ghana. The qualitative research findings independently established a strong association between IMO/MO and employee/customer satisfaction. The second stage employed a survey to test a conceptual framework based on the IMO/MO constructs using hypotheses formulated based on reviewed literature. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were employed to analyse the survey responses. The model demonstrated a good fit to the data in terms of face and content validity; convergent, discriminant and nomological validity; reliability and stability; and showing improvement to existing scales. A major contribution of this research was the use of a robust model that explained the application of the five dimensions of the IMO construct and their effect on employee in-role behaviour (IRB) to impact employee satisfaction within the Ghanaian banking sector. These findings were not totally consistent with various previous research works in the IMO literature. However, employee in-role behaviour (IRB) has been seen to drive market orientation, and market orientation has been established as a key driver of performance in terms of customer value and satisfaction. These findings are in support of established theoretical positions in the MO literature. Another contribution of the study to knowledge in managerial decision making is that, a better understanding and implementation of the IMO construct in the strategic planning efforts of the banks and subsequent employment in their business processes, and activities will positively affect employee job satisfaction. Effective staff commitment to duty will drive the banks’ prospects to exploit the vast opportunities in financial intermediation driven by liberalization and deepening of Ghana’s economic development and growth in higher levels of savings, investment, production and poverty alleviation. Again, positive in-role behaviours of the banks’ managers will affect their commitment to their subordinates in their work roles, and this will increase the responsiveness of staff to customers’ needs and wants. This process will create trust among customers to their banks to accept formal banking as a good, safe, convenient and rewarding experience.
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