THE LATERAL TENSION BETWEEN DIFFERENT ALTERNATIVE ACTIVITIES


The third major area to consider concerns the relationships within the organization where marketing is situated. The main tensions here derive from the relationship between R&D and marketing/sales.

In spite of the many books and articles aimed at making their readers understand cultural differences, it is remarkable just how little attention is paid to the effects these cultural differences have within an organization. Talk at random to any employee of an innovative organization and you will receive confirmation that the relationship between its R&D and Marketing Departments is its Achilles heel. THT's extensive database of 65,000 respondents has captured such cultural constructs, and confirms that the orientation of both these functional groups differ significantly. The manifestations of this tense relationship are revealed in three main areas. Let's look at them.

Researchers often complain that Marketing rarely allows them enough time to deliver an adequate piece of work. In their view, Marketing gives them too little time to develop, test, and fine-tune a product, which often leads to discrepancies between client expectations and the delivered goods. When this happens, R&D see most of the profits as lost in upgrading the product to the originally expected standard. Marketeers, in their turn , often complain about a lack of flexibility and slow reaction speeds in R&D.

Our research into differences of time horizons between both functional groups shows that the time horizon of the marketers is significantly shorter than that of people working in R&D. Considering the exercise opposite and you can see the differences in scores between functions.

In addition, R&D employees are also much more universalistic than marketers and especially salespeople. This last group seems to move from one exceptional situation to the next in their belief that every sale is unique, which infuriates researchers.

A second source of misunderstanding seems to be in the area of communication style. Here also THT's research shows that R&D people often communicate in a direct, specialized, and specific tone. Their use of language is to the point but is only understood by their own small group because of the jargon they often use. Marketers tend to use more flowery language, which is often less to the point. Sometimes the easiest solution seems to be to cease communication completely. Inevitably this leads to significant problems, and in particular to the complaint of researchers that they are involved too little in the marketing process.

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Exercise

Consider the relative significance of the past, present, and future. You will be asked to indicate your relative time horizons for the past, present, and future by giving a number.

7

=

Years

6

=

Months

5

=

Weeks

4

=

Days

3

=

Hours

2

=

Minutes

1

=

Seconds

My past started

ago, and ended

ago.

My present started

ago, and ends

from now.

My future will start

ago, and will end.

from now.

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Finally the lack of understanding and empathy for each other's work and culture seems to be one of the ultimate reasons for the tension in their relationship. Researchers complain that marketers fail to discover the full possibilities of specific markets while, at the same time, exploring markets that don't actually exist. Marketers see researchers as living too much in their own world. This, of course, is another fundamental difference, between external and internal views.

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Figure 9.3: Relative length of time horizon for a selected sample of functional disciplines

But what needs to be done to take better advantage of these different orientations? The Marketing Science Institute conducted interesting research, published in 1996, on how organizations can take advantage of this fundamental field of tension:

The Exploration of Cross-Functional Development Groups

These so-called "skunk" groups can achieve many successes when they integrate functions on-site and, further, when they are not hindered by existing bureaucratic processes. In these groups physical, linguistic, and cultural borders are very effectively overcome . Much attention, however, needs to be given to the quality of management in these groups.

Moving People between Functions

Cross-functional moves between R&D and Marketing Departments are not easy because of the specialized nature of their activities. Starting with the recruitment phase, companies need to work at attracting people who can be useful across functions and can be placed in a variety of environments. Moreover, focused internal development programs need to support the mobility of staff.

The Development of Informal Social Systems

This aim is not easily achieved because it cannot be forced upon people, but recreational activities can encourage informal social interaction in a light-hearted way. Here too, much can be achieved by minimizing the physical distance between the functions. Fruitful collaboration often occurs unexpectedly around central coffee points.

Changing the Organizational Design

General Electric and Philips have many coordination groups that bring together specializations in a balanced way. With good management stimulating cross-fertilization, many cultural and linguistic barriers can be crossed. The matrix organization is another option in which functional specialists carry on reporting to their particular boss and have a " dotted line" responsibility toward the project leader.

A More Focused Reward System

It appears that marketing staff very often have a variable reward system that is linked to market share. Developers frequently receive their bonuses on the basis of technological developments. A reward system that is very dependent on how much information is transferred across functions will have a positive effect on the revenues and profitability of a company.

Formal Management Processes Such as Project Management Can Add Much to the Effectiveness of the Integration between R&D and Marketing

This is how Mitsubishi, for example, developed the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) process whereby the client, via a program called "Qualityhouse," was given a coordinating role between marketing and R&D. Such processes seem to decrease market uncertainties as well as having a positive effect on the innovative power of an organization. This has now been extended further to DFD - Design-Function-Deployment (see Jebb and Woolliams, 2000).

However, even in the event of an organization following all of the above advice, ultimate success will depend on the quality of leadership and the organizational culture in which these processes need to unfold. In this context, let's look further at Bang & Olufsen.

Technical Excellence and the Emotional Climate

Anders Knutsen saw himself confronting the tension between technical excellence and emotional appeal . The latter was a subtle and diffuse concept. Beautiful audio-visual information had to be conveyed on instruments worthy of their content, in the same way that the instruments of an orchestra carry the spirit of the composer and express that composer's feeling. "Time is in our favor," Knutsen said. "The world is flooded with discount junk products that strive to become classics, and products with emotional value will be strongly placed in our ' throwaway ' culture" (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 2001).

In the history of B&O both technical excellence and emotional climate had been important, more so than sales or marketing, but even these leading values had not been reconciled or harmonized. First one was dominant and then the other, and their fight for dominance had made the product which resulted unaffordable. So Knutsen created "Idealand," a non-localized space where engineers , music lovers, designers, and others, both within R&D and outside the company in the community of experts, could engage in an dialog that would both stimulate ideas and balance them.

Another balance is between the audio and the visual that come together in digital sound pictures. Carl Henrik Jeppesen, B&O's chief engineer, explained to us: "We send development teams , usually to the US, to study what sounds and sights are being made and consumed. They go to concerts, music studios , discotheques, clubs. You need someone to champion the original sound picture and the emotions generated from them and someone to champion the technologies of recording and playing those sound pictures. It is this creative clash between the artists and engineers that gives you optimal integration. In the old days one competence would dominate the others but no more. There came the day when Anders Knutsen and his team refused to sponsor a prototype product because the costs were out of line. That was a real shock for all of us. It had never happened here!

"We now test our products with our customers and if they like them, sales start at once with a projected product life of ten years. We position ourselves in the market in such a way that it confirms or fails to confirm the hypotheses developed in Idealand. The latter is no private muse, but a testing laboratory for viable ideas, a set of hypotheses to which our customers say yes or no" (Private communication).

B&O elicited this dilemma, which they defined in their own words as:

On the one hand...

On the other hand...

An aesthetic and emotional commitment to the beauty of sights and sounds recorded and played

An engineering and technological commitment to brilliant scientific solutions

In our conceptual framework, this is expressed as:

On the one hand...

On the other hand...

Particularism of art Diffuseness of experience Affective

Universalism of science Specificity of solution Neutral

This is illustrated in Figure 9.4. Thus B&O's dilemma actually touches on three of our dimensions.

click to expand
Figure 9.4: Reconciling universalism with particularism at Bang & Olufsen

There is the diffuse and affective experiences of particular art forms and the specific neutrality of scientific and universal solutions. B&O had two strong traditions, often at odds with one another and hence tilting the balance of power, now this way and now that. On the vertical axis of Figure 9.4 we have the engineering commitment to specific scientific solutions and on the horizontal axis the aesthetic and emotional commitment to music and visual art forms.

As we've seen, to counterbalance the strong influence of R&D, teams were sent to the US and elsewhere to try to capture the ineffable qualities of new sounds and sights, so that these could be faithfully rendered. You have to love what you are trying to reproduce in high fidelity, in order to convey the genuine experience. It is in Idealand that these various values met, clashed, and achieved a final harmony. Each group championed their own values until these found inclusion in a larger system and in a more creative synthesis - all watched over by a principle of parsimony that sought to cut costs to the bone.




Marketing Across Cultures
Marketing Across Cultures (Culture for Business Series)
ISBN: 1841124710
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 82

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