Effect of Management Behaviours and Environmental Dynamics on Market Orientation Behaviours among Botswana’s Small Service Firms

Abstract

Market orientation has emerged as a significant antecedent of organizational performance and is presumed to contribute to the long term success of a firm. While all firms are strongly influenced by their external environmental, small and medium sized firms may be more influenced by their own tangible and intangible management behaviours as well as environmental dynamics. The growing number of academic studies on market orientation and mixed findings they have reported complicate the efforts among managers and academics to identify the real antecedents of this construct. The results of this study shows that there is a positive association between top management emphasis, interpersonal connectedness,market turbulence, competition and market orientation behaviours of small service firms. Centralization component of management behaviours among small service firms was however found to have positive relation with market orientation attitudes of small service firms. This contrast with extant findings in developed economies. This study thus explicate some new insights and questions on this important strategic direction.