Does Market Orientation Make Sense?

Abstract

Rong and Wilkinson (2011) correctly argue that survey data reveals more about the cognitive maps of key informants than the underlying relations among MO and performance. I argue that treating MO as a latent variable is problematic, analysis should focus on individual observations or cases rather than “variate traces.” There is critical concern about the ability of surveys of key informants to elicit individual cognitive causal maps or to produce an “objective” causal map that can be generalised. These issues lead to the need for different types of research methodologies.