The Role Of Individual-Level Factors In Explaining Marketing Power

Power as the ability to determine action is critical to any organizational player in order to achieve goals and set strategic directions. For marketing departments power perspectives have only been scarcely applied with analyses focusing on structural and contingency determinants, thus lacking a thorough understanding of the drivers of marketing power. Particularly personal power sources have gone unmentioned or been explicitly excluded in marketing power research (Homburg et al. 1999). However, insight on the underlying mechanisms is needed to shed light on the effectiveness of power sources and to design empowering means that counter marketing’s strategic decline and enable marketing to reflect its attributed organizational importance. Acknowledging the shortcomings in previous research, this study proposes a combination of person- and position-based power sources to explore the marketing department’s power. The study applies a framework by Kenny and Wilson (1984) that includes a) expertise and charisma as personal power sources to reveal the role of individual characteristics, b) access to resources, access to information, and relational capital to account for hierarchical or position-related derivation of power, and c) additionally incorporates asset specificity as a context specific moderator. In doing so, the study picks up on research of micro-foundations by investigating the contributions that individuals make to departmental power beyond unit-level or firm-level factors and accounts for the relevance of contextual factors, as they influence the function of power sources. The research propositions are derived from Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) and follow the understanding that a department acquires power by providing resources to the firm that top management depends on in order to achieve its goals. By providing necessary information, business relationships, and expertise, the marketing department’s person-based and position-based factors function as sources of power. The less substitutable and more critical these factors are to overall organizational success, the more power the marketing department gains.