Corollaries of the collective: The influence of organizational culture and memory development on perceived decision-making context

The market-focused learning organization continues to attract attention in the marketing literature. Two central and interrelated aspects of collective learning are organizational culture and memory. The relationship between culture and performance has been demonstrated both theoretically and empirically. This study investigates the influence of culture and organizational memory development on perceptions of managers’ decision-making context. Findings suggest that both organizational culture and memory influence marketing managers’ perceptions of decision-making context. Specifically, managers in externally focused cultures tend to perceive a relatively higher proportion of strategic problems than managers in internally focused cultures, and managers in organic process cultures tend to perceive a relatively higher proportion of unstructured problems than managers in mechanistic cultures. The implications for managerial practice are discussed and avenues for future research outlined. Pierre Berthon is a professor of marketing at the School of Management, University of Bath, United Kingdom. Prior to taking up his present position, he was adjunct professor of marketing at Columbia Business School, University of Columbia, New York. His research interests are eclectic but focus mainly on the areas of management decision making, strategic modes of organization, electronic commerce, and interactive marketing. His work has been published in a wide range of journals, includingSloan Management Review, California Management Review, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Advertising Research, Business Horizons, Omega, andTechnological Forecasting and Social Change. He is coauthor of a textbook on electronic commerce (Electronic Commerce: The Strategic Perspective, published by Dryden). Leyland F. Pitt is a professor in the School of Marketing at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. He has also taught executive programs at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and the London Business School. His current research focuses on marketing strategy and the marketing/technology interface. His work has been accepted for publication in such academic and practitioner journals as theCalifornia Management Review, Sloan Management Review, Columbia Journal of World Business, Communications of the ACM, theJournal of Advertising Research, theJournal of Business Research, andMIS Quarterly, of which he is also an associate editor. Michael T. Ewing is an associate professor in the School of Marketing at Curtin University of Technology. Before that, he worked for Ford Motor Company. He has taught in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the Czech Republic, South Africa, and England. His research and teaching interests include marketing communications, E-commerce, and international advertising. Among others, his work has appeared in theAsian Journal of Marketing, Business Horizons, theJournal of Advertising Research, theJournal of Business Research, theJournal of Marketing Communications, and theInternational Journal of Advertising. He serves on the editorial review board of theJournal of Advertising Research.