Investigating the relationship between coordination of international marketing-human resource functions with the effectiveness of marketing strategy implementation in export companies

Introduction
The process of strategic management requires many mutual interactions. Thus, effective collaboration is required between top executive management and managers of other functional departments in order to implement strategies successfully. The necessity of this coordination between the functions of international marketing and human resources is due to the different nature of their goals. Because the main responsibility of the marketing function is to meet the long-term needs of customers, while human resource department pursues providing performance-related benefits for employees (Chimhanzi, 2004; Chimhanzi & Morgan, 2005). In an effort to address these important objectives, each function is subjected to the pressure of other functions; therefore, more conflicts occur between them.
Although these concepts have largely been developed over the past three decades, little attention has been paid to the empirical investigation of interactions between marketing and other functional units, including human resources in the success of strategy implementation. Regarding this, in the present research, the coordination of international marketing-human resource functions with the effectiveness of marketing strategy implementation in the context of export companies is examined.
Placement of organizations in turbulent and uncertain environments necessitates the effective implementation and development of inter-functional coordination among different parts of an organization (Mohsen & Eng, 2016). On the other hand, market-oriented firms’ success relies on the coordination between various sectors, and this coordination is necessary to meet the market demands and promote marketing performance (Mohsen & Eng, 2016). Giannakis and Harker (2014) demonstrated the necessity of the alignment of HRM policies with relationship marketing in order to achieve organizational goals. Recently, researches by Chimhangzi and Morgan have been carried out on the necessity of the coordination between the functions of international marketing and human resources; they emphasized the need for coordination among these functions for the effectiveness of marketing strategy implementation grounded on Anderson's constituency-based theory of the firm (Chimhanzi & Morgan, 2005).
In this vein, the data were collected by distributing 54 questionnaires to export companies. Responses to questionnaire items were measured on five-point Likert scales where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree. Stepwise regression analysis was utilized to investigate the causal relationships between independent and dependent variables.
Results provide support for the main hypotheses of the research that there is a positive relationship between the relationship effectiveness and the effectiveness of marketing strategy implementation and a negative relationship between the inter-functional conflict and the effectiveness of marketing strategy implementation.
 
Methods
The data were collected by distributing 54 questionnaires to export companies participating in non-oil export development conference held in Tabriz. Each questionnaire included 41 questions and responses to the items were measured on five-point Likert scales where 1 = ʻstrongly disagreeʼ and 5 = ʻstrongly agreeʼ.
Spearman's rank correlation test was used for bivariate analyses and to investigate the causal relationships between independent and dependent variables, stepwise regression analysis was implemented.
 
Findings and argument
Results revealed that joint reward system, senior management support and social orientation have positive and significant effect on relationship effectiveness. In addition, the negative and significant impact of mechanical structure, formal communications and social orientation on inter-functional conflict is supported.  
Results also demonstrated that the relationship effectiveness has positive and significant effect on marketing strategy implementation effectiveness; furthermore, inter-functional conflict affects significantly marketing strategy implementation effectiveness in a negative way.
Figure 1 shows a summary of the results. As outlined, the continuous lines represent supported hypotheses, while dash lines represent paths that have not been confirmed.
 





Relationship quality










Mechanical structure










Joint reward system










Senior management support










Formal communications










Social orientation










Relationship effectiveness










Inter-functional conflict










Marketing strategy implementation effectiveness





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Figure 1. Conceptual model demonstrating outcomes of stepwise regression analysis   
 
Conclusion and recommendations
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the international marketing-human resource functions with the effectiveness of marketing strategy implementation in the context of export companies. The main findings of the study confirmed the hypothesized relationships among the research variables. In this regard, according to the results of the regression tests, joint reward system had the strongest positive relationship with the relationship effectiveness, whereas the mechanical structure had the strongest negative relationship with inter-functional conflict. Also, among the five independent variables of the study, only social orientation affects both dimensions of relationship quality. Moreover, considering the results of the regression test in the third stage, it can be suggested that in order to achieve the effectiveness in marketing strategy implementation, creating effective relationships between different functions is of utmost importance; on the other hand, efforts should be made to reduce conflict between functional units. Overall, research findings confirm that firms are able to gain competitive advantage by coordinating international marketing- human resource functions.