Do managers at two hierarchical levels differ in how they assess their company's market orientation?

The purpose of the presented empirical study was to examine the cultural and behavioural adoption of a market orientation as perceived by two groups of managers: general managers and marketing managers. With regard to marketoriented behaviours, a distinction is made between a responsive and a proactive market orientation. Based on a single-informant approach, comparisons between both groups of managers are made by testing invariant latent mean structures. An analysis of 363 companies from a South-east European country reveals that the general managers perceived all components of a market orientation significantly better than the marketing managers.