Marketing/Finance Executives Personal and Business Value Perspectives: Implications for Market-Focused Management

The concept of Market-Focused Management posits that the ultimate goal of the organization is the satisfaction of custumers' needs. In doing so other objectives of the firm, including financial objectives such as increasing shareholder wealth and long term profitability, will be achieved. The chief marketing and financial officers of the Fortune 1000 firms were surveyed regarding their personal values and a variety of organizational values relating to company stakeholders, organizational goals, appropriate strategies and tactics, competitive strengths and advantages. While both groups exhibited some differences, there was a startling amount of consensus in all areas surveyed. Both groups ranked shareholders and customers as the two most important stakeholders. While the overall goal of customer satisfaction was ranked by both groups as the most important organizational goal, the means to achieving that end differ somewhat. While a large number of organizational values were related to personal value strength, there was little overlap in the relationships between the two groups, although both groups are overwhelmingly driven by other-focused values such as warm relationships with others, sense of belonging and being well respected. Thus, it was concluded that similar personal values lead marketing and financial managers to substantially different attitudinal schema in their approach to managing their responsibilites.