Role Uncertainty and Marketing Performance in Service Firms

Commentators on service organizations often argue that in multi-site firms, branch level, facility-managers tend to make a trade-off between operations and marketing demands. This paper employs a role-theoretic approach to examining some of the problems that these managers face in determining decision-making priorities between operations and marketing. Furthermore, the material is presented around a naive model which attempts to suggest that the role uncertainty of facility managers impinges upon their ability to generate market-orientation at the line level in service firms1. The approach used to conceptualize this tenet draws from the extant literature in industrial psychology/sociology, organizational theory/design, and services marketing, in an attempt to explicate some of the organizational determinants of “operations myopia".