Market orientation and organizational performance : is innovation the missing link?

A market-oriented corporate culture has increasingly been considered as prescriptive of superior corporate performance in recents years. Although organization innovativeness has been considered as propelling this market orientation-corporate performance relationship, much of the evidence to date remains anecdotal or speculative. In this context, we propose a systematic framework to test the postulated "market orientation-innovation-performance" chain. To this end, we take a component-wise approach by examining how the three core components of market orientation (customer orientation, competitor orientation, and interfunctional coordination) impact the two core components of organization innovativeness (technical vs. administrative) en route to impacting corporate performance. Using a sample from the banking industry, we empirically test and substantiate innovation's mediator role in the market orientation-corporate performance relationship