Strategy, market orientation and performance: the political context

• Author: Philippe Vries,Stephan C. Henneberg,Ghasem Zaefarian,Robert P. Ormrod
• Date: 01 February 2015
• Published date: 01 February 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1494

■Academic Paper

Strategy, market orientation and

performance: the political context

Robert P. Ormrod

1

*, Ghasem Zaefarian

2

, Stephan C. Henneberg

3

and Philippe de Vries

4

1

Aarhus University, Department of Economics and Management, Aarhus V, Denmark

2

University of Leeds, Leeds University Business School, Leeds, UK

3

Queen Mary University of London, School of Business and Management, London, UK

4

University of Antwerp, Faculty of Politics and Social Sciences, Antwerp, Belgium

This paper investigates the fit between the strategic posture of a political party and its political market orientation,

and analyses the impact of this fit on party performance. For this purpose, a configuration theory logic is applied

to the context of the political market; in particular, we develop strategic profiles (i.e. strategic postures and political

market orientation) of four Belgian political parties represented in the Flemish Parliament. By comparing the strategic

profiles derived from a questionnaire administered to 3148 party members with those of ‘theoretically ideal’profiles,

we uncover the ‘strategic misfit’(or ‘misalignment’) for each party and then relate this misfit to party performance.

Results indicate that there is a strong, negative relationship between the misalignment of actual and perceived

strategic profiles on the one hand and performance on the other. However, the ‘ideal profiles’differ with the strategic

posture of a party. Thus, our findings show that it is not so much the strategic posture itself that will determine

superior performance, but it is the strategic posture that the party aligns with implementing a particular political

market orientation that is the most important factor. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Marketing concepts can be used to explain political

exchanges (Henneberg & O’Shaughnessy, 2007;

Henneberg & Ormrod, 2013) and to optimise the

political management of parties, candidates or gov-

ernments (O’Cass & Voogla, 2011; Lilleker & Lees-

Marshment, 2005), for example, relating to strategic

issues of positioning (Dean & Croft, 2001). For ex-

ample, between early 2002 and mid 2004, the British

Labour Party and its leader and Prime Minister,

Tony Blair, changed their strategic posture with re-

gard to political marketing, particularly how they

related to public opinion and developed market

offerings such as political stances, leadership char-

acteristics and their political brand. It has been

argued that Blair and the Labour government

moved from ‘spin-obsession’, a focus group-driven

approach to policy-making that followed public

opinion, to an approach based on core principles,

that is, an assertive leadership orientation even in

the face of a large scale parliamentary revolt by

back-bench Labour members of Parliament

(Henneberg, 2006a). The trigger for this change in

strategic posture was clearly Tony Blair’s decision

to send British troops to participate in the Iraq

war in 2003 (Kramer, 2003). However, in terms of

political marketing, this change in the strategic

posture—how Labour ‘competed’in the political

market (Henneberg, 2002)—provided only the con-

text for more structural and operational political

marketing decisions. Thus, the question was

whether such a general change in the strategic

*Correspondence to: Robert P. Ormrod, Aarhus University,

Department of Economics and Management, Aarhus V,Denmark.

E-mail: rormrod@econ.au.dk

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 15 Number 1 pp 40–55 (2015)

Published online 12 November 2013 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1494

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

intent would mean that Labour also needs to

change the party’s organisational characteristics in

order to align these with this new strategic context.

In other words, Labour was faced with the issue of

whether such strategic posture shifts had implica-

tions for organisational aspects of its political mar-

keting management.

One way of dealing with such issues of strategic

posture shifts in management research is by using

configuration theory. Configuration theory holds

that the fit between an organisation’s strategic pos-

ture and certain structural and organisational as-

pects of management determines its performance

(Ketchen, Thomas, & Snow, 1993; Vorhies & Morgan,

2003); thus, the better the strategy-structure fit, the

more aligned the organisation’s capabilities with

the success criteria for a given competitive environ-

ment. Although this issue has been investigated

widely in the commercial management context

(e.g. Vorhies & Morgan, 2005; Hult, Boyer, & Ketchen,

2007), this is not the case in the context of strategic

political marketing. Thus, the motivation for this

paper is to investigate whether the context of

strategic political postures relates to issues involv-

ing the political organisation and ultimately to

organisational performance.

Therefore, the contribution of this paper is to ex-

pand the conceptual and descriptive work on the

impact of commercial marketing strategy concepts

to include an understanding of the empirical rela-

tionship between party strategy, party organisation

and party performance. As we investigate the novel

political context, our paper also has the potential to

test and enrich the concepts of the commercial

marketing literature (Henneberg & O’Shaughnessy,

2007). This is important as in a broad definition of

marketing (i.e. including non-traditional exchange

situations such as social and political markets), con-

cepts need to be robust enough to cross market-

domain boundaries (Baines & Lynch, 2005; Ormrod,

Henneberg, & O’Shaughnessy, 2013). Our research

furthermore provides guidance to the practical po-

litical manager as to which organisational aspect to

focus on in a specific situations (i.e. within a chosen

strategy framework) and which to de-emphasise to

free resources that can be re-deployed in other

organisational areas. This is important as it provides

a strategy-oriented understanding of organisational

resource and capability development within politi-

cal parties. A particular insight relates to the fact

that simply including a wide range of stakeholders

in strategy formulation—that is, emphasising all as-

pects of political market orientation—is not optimal

in all situations. These findings qualify previous

research that found that political parties in the same

political system prioritise different stakeholder ori-

entations (Ormrod & Henneberg, 2006, 2011).

We first develop the conceptual framework that

will be used in this paper, grounded in configuration

theory, and then demonstrate how the two aspects of

strategic intent on the one hand and organisational

structure on the other, can be applied to the political

context in the form of strategic political postures

(SPPs; Henneberg, 2006b) and organisational politi-

cal market orientation (PMO; Ormrod, 2005, 2011).

Following this, we integrate the political marketing

literature and utilise qualitative and quantitative

methods in order to assess the fit of theoretically

derived ideal strategic profiles (i.e. the best possible

fit between a given strategic posture and character-

istics of PMO) with the actual organisational profile

of a party. This fit (or misfit) is to impact on party

performance. Finally, we discuss the implications

of the results of our investigation for the academic

and practitioner communities.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Configuration theory and strategic postures in the

political market

Configuration theory logic asserts that organisations

can adopt alternative strategic postures, each of which

can be successful in a given competitive environment

(Mintzberg, 1979, 1983; Miles & Snow, 1978). How-

ever, simply embracing any of these specificstrategic

postures will not necessarily guarantee success;

for each posture, specific capabilities must be

implemented in order for the strategic posture to

be effective in a market environment (Walker &

Ruekert, 1987; Doty, Glick, & Huber, 1993; Ketchen

et al., 1997; Ruekert, Orville, & Roering, 1985; Van

de Ven & Drazin, 1985). Thus, the chosen strategic

posture provides the context or framework in

which the organisation implements these capabili-

ties. Configuration theory also assumes that there

exist different‘ideal’capabilities foreach of the strate-

gic postures (Drazin & Van de Ven, 1985; Doty et al.,

1993). The interplay between these organisational

capabilities and the chosen strategic posture for an

organisation provides a specificprofile.Thefit

between organisational capabilities and the strate-

gic postures is argued t o be a key determinant o f

the success of an organisation (Ket chen et al., 1993;

Vorhies & Morgan, 2003).

An organisation adopts a strategic posture as part

of a wider decision concerning its competitive

position within its environment. Thus, a strategic

posture implies an intended configuration of

Political strategy, PMO and performance 41

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Public Affairs 15,40–55 (2015)

DOI: 10.1002/pa