University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The Effect of Marketing Executives¡¯ Boundary Spanning Ability on Organizational Culture

Drawing upon role-identity theory, the study examines the managerial role in marketing cross-functional integration and organizational culture. Three important research issues are addressed in the study. First, the study plan to develop and validate the scale to measure a new construct in marketing research¡ªboundary-spanning ability. Second, by examining marketing executives¡¯ multi-foci commitments, the study extends the traditional notion of commitment to a specific constituent to the investigation of an individual level of commitment towards multiple functions. Third, an integrated model on marketing managers¡¯ multi-foci commitments is tested using structural equation model with latent variables. By elaborating on the increasing importance of marketing executives¡¯ boundary spanning ability, the study contributes to the better understanding of managers¡¯ role in executing marketing functions, thereby shaping the whole organizational culture.