Manager personality and customer orientation in market-oriented logistics organizations

Recently, employee factors that influence organizational performance are moving to the forefront (Copacino, 1999). Performance is influenced by a complex relationship between organizational and individual characteristics used to create a competitive advantage. Specifically, the interaction between customer-orientation and market orientation is thought to influence competitive advantage creation and the logistics function's ability to contribute to the firm's perceived performance.; The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between manager's characteristics and one firm characteristic that contribute to the managers perception of how the firm is performing. The firm characteristic is market orientation, while managerial characteristics include personality, need for cognition, and customer-orientation. Personality and need for cognition are postulated to be antecedents for customer-orientation. Market and customer-orientation share a direct relationship with performance. Organizational success is measured using perceived business unit performance (Burke, 1984). The research question, is there an ideal customer-oriented personality or departmental orientation, and if so, what influence does it have on the business unit's perceived performance?; Data was collected as part of a Larger study done for the Council of Logistics Management. Respondents are employed by logistics firms or work in the organization's logistics function. Individuals were asked to answer questions about their personality, need for cognition, customer-orientation, and the firm's perceived market orientation and performance. AMOS™, a structural equation modeling package was used to identify the relationship between the constructs.; The results suggest market and customer-orientation are significantly related with perceived business unit performance. Market orientation influences the degree employees engaged in customer-oriented behaviors. Two personality characteristics agreeableness and need for cognition exhibit a positive relationship with customer orientation. Consistent with prior research several personality constructs are correlated with need for cognition.