• Antecedents of conflict in marketing's cross-functional relationship with sales

      Dawes, Philip L.; Massey, Graham R. (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2005)
      The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model of the factors that explain the level of interpersonal conflict between marketing managers and sales managers. The paper aims to establish the overall level of interpersonal conflict in the full sample and in the two sampled countries (UK and Australia). Design/methodology/approach – The study draws on two theoretical frameworks to develop the model, namely structural contingency theory and the interaction approach. More specifically, the conceptual framework uses three groups of variables to explain interpersonal conflict: structural, individual, and communication. Importantly, the study developed and tested nine hypotheses. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the validity of the measures while OLS regression was used in testing the hypotheses. The data were collected from 200 sales managers in the UK and Australia. Findings – Overall, the study finds that there was a surprisingly low level of interpersonal conflict between marketing managers and sales managers and that there were no differences across the two countries. Of the three groups of variables, the two communication variables – frequency and bidirectionality – had the strongest effects on interpersonal conflict. The next strongest effects were from the individual-level variables – psychological distance and the sales manager's formal education. The findings also reveal that the level of the sales manager's marketing training and the marketing manager's sales experience had no influence on interpersonal conflict. Two of the three structural variables – use of lateral linkages and being part of a corporation – had the hypothesized negative impact on interpersonal conflict. Originality/value – This is the first study to use a large empirical survey to examine the marketing and sales dyad. Also, it is one of the few studies to test the effects of communication behviours on peer manager conflict.
    • The antecedents and consequences of functional and dysfunctional conflict between Marketing Managers and Sales Managers

      Massey, Graham R.; Dawes, Philip L. (Elsevier, 2007)
      Focusing on the working relationship between Marketing Managers and Sales Managers, our study examines two dimensions of interpersonal conflict: dysfunctional conflict and functional conflict. Drawing on relevant theory, we include three communication variables – frequency, bidirectionality, and quality – as antecedents in our structural model. Using these explanatory variables we predict the two conflict dimensions, and in turn, use these same three communication variables, and the two conflict dimensions to predict our ultimate endogenous variable — perceived relationship effectiveness. Overall, our model has high explanatory power, and we find support for nine of the thirteen hypotheses. More specifically, two of the three communication variables – communication quality and bidirectionality – significantly impact on both forms of conflict, and relationship effectiveness, though communication frequency only influenced the quality of communication between the Marketing Managers and the Sales Managers. In addition, the variables in our model better predict the levels of functional conflict in the Marketing/Sales relationship than dysfunctional conflict. Finally, an important new finding in this research is that the overall level of dysfunctional conflict between these two functional managers is relatively low, while functional conflict is high.