Competitiveness improvement in public sector organizations: What they need?

• Author: Amitab Bhattacharjee,Asghar Afshar Jahanshahi
• Date: 01 May 2020
• Published date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2011

ACADEMIC PAPER

Competitiveness improvement in public sector organizations:

What they need?

Asghar Afshar Jahanshahi

1

| Amitab Bhattacharjee

2

1

CENTRUM Católica Graduate Business

School, Pontificia Universidad Católica del

Perú, Lima, Peru

2

Independent Researcher, Narsingdi,

Bangladesh

Correspondence

Asghar Afshar Jahanshahi, CENTRUM Católica

Graduate Business School, Pontificia

Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima 15023,

Peru.

Email: afshar@pucp.edu.pe

What types of public sector organizations have more capabilities to build competi-

tive advantages? Ability to achieve a unique advantage over the competitors is a

way to explain why some of the firms are more successful than others, and it is

important to the survival of both public and private businesses in the present day's

highly competitive business world. Concentrating on the role of employees, the

current study analyzes how internal marketing, employees' positive work attitude,

and employees' intention to leave have an impact on public firms' competitiveness

improvement. Our survey-based data from 82 public sector organizations in

Bangladesh showed that internal marketing affects positively on employees' posi-

tive work attitude and negatively on employees' intention to leave in public sector

organizations. Most importantly, our result confirmed that firms' internal marketing

and employees' positive work attitude influence positively on firms' competitive-

ness improvement. We did not find any significant relationship between

employees' intention to leave and firms' competitiveness improvement in public

sector organization.

1|INTRODUCTION

Internal marketing included those activities that intend to support the

satisfaction of internal customers' (employees) requirements.

According to Foreman and Money (1995), internal marketing is a new

emerging concept in business and marketing literature, and yet this

remains an area in business and marketing with many fundamental

questions unanswered. In order to know if organizations may benefit

from the internal marketing, in this research, we are trying to know

how treating employees as internal customers of the company (inter-

nal marketing) may help to improve the public sector organizations'

competitiveness.

Competitiveness improvement of firms has received a great deal

of attention by business and marketing scholars in recent years

(Barney, 1991; Jahanshahi, Nawaser, Eizi, & Etemadi, 2015;

Srivastava, Fahey, & Kurt, 2001). However, the majority of these stud-

ies concentrated on how private businesses are able to improve their

competitiveness. There is a limited understanding about the roots of

competitiveness improvement among public sector businesses

(Carmeli & Schaubroeck, 2005; Matthews & Shulman, 2005). Public

sector organizations such as public transit, public health, or public

education provide some kind of services or goods that eventually ben-

efit the whole society. However, there is a high level of competition

among these firms and with private sector businesses in the same

industry as well. In order to fill this research gap, the first purpose of

this paper is to investigate the effect of internal marketing on

employees' positive work attitude and their intention to leave. Then,

the paper tested the impact of these three factors on public sector

firms' competitiveness improvement in Bangladesh.

Internal marketing means that the company treats the employees

as the internal customers who are an important factor in delivering

satisfaction to external customers (Ballantyne, 1997; Hogg, Carter, &

Dunne, 1998). Internal marketing can improve the public organiza-

tions' competitiveness because these kinds of activities enhance

employees' (internal customers) engagement with their organization's

main objectives and goals (Foreman & Money, 1995). There is a rich

literature that emphasizes the importance of employees on firms'

competitiveness improvement (Pfeffer, 1994). Employees are the

most essential and valuable assets of organizations (McGrath, Tsai,

Received: 28 June 2019 Revised: 22 July 2019 Accepted: 21 August 2019

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2011

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