Dynamic managerial capabilities of marketing in strategic change

Organizations are facing a turbulent market environment especially because of digitalization and other external changes in the marketplace. Dynamic capabilities can foster the competitiveness of the enterprises performing in these unstable business environments. This requires valuable dynamic managerial capabilities from leaders and especially from the top management who can help to develop and enhance these capabilities. This study examines the dynamic managerial capabilities of marketing, as marketing can be an important factor improving the competitiveness by taking the market-oriented aspect into consideration. The purpose of this thesis is to identify, categorize and interpret dynamic managerial capabilities of marketing managers and their roles in the strategic change of a business. The theoretical framework of the study consists of exploring the diverse purpose and tasks of marketing managers together with the dynamic managerial capabilities. These capabilities are reflected through activities and cognitive abilities that can be recognized with tasks performed in the processes of sensing and seizing opportunities as well as reconfiguring assets in strategic change. The strategic tasks of marketing managers are detected in these processes. In the qualitative research, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 top marketing executives from Finnish companies of different sizes performing in dynamic market environments. Critical Incident Technique was used as a supportive method aiding the identification of the most important tasks and capabilities in each of the processes. Content analysis and coding was utilized as analysis methods in the categorization of these capabilities into the three processes reflecting the strategic change. Micro-level tasks consisting of different activities and cognitive abilities were identified in order to detect the important dynamic managerial capabilities within each of the three processes that foster the strategic change. The key dynamic managerial capabilities of marketing management were identified to be mainly customer-centric, relational, creative and cultural in nature. Three groups of managerial capabilities were formed in this study with the additional sub-capabilities that were identified from the interviews. The groups consist of 1) Individual and rational dynamic managerial capabilities, 2) Relational and human-centric dynamic managerial capabilities, and 3) Creative and cultural dynamic managerial capabilities. Sub-capabilities were recognized within the three groups. The most essential dynamic managerial capabilities throughout the processes were relational, creative and cultural capabilities. The findings of this study indicate that the above-mentioned capabilities are mostly affective and human-centric in nature differing from the existing research where capabilities have been observed from a rational and individual point of view. Thus, this study brings a more behavioural and emotional view into the research of dynamic managerial capabilities and their microfoundations along with the new concept of dynamic managerial capabilities of marketing extending the research on strategic marketing. This study suggests that marketing executives have creative and affective customer-centric dynamic capabilities that could be valuable in building of unique dynamic capabilities of an organization