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The authors hypothesize that customer presence in the boardroom of business-to-business (B2B) firms brings customer orientation and customer knowledge to the board of directors and thereby enhances B2B firm performance. Using an objective measure of customer presence in the boardroom and a sample of 329 B2B firms over a nine-year period, the authors find support for this hypothesis. Moreover, relying on the resource-based view, they hypothesize that the performance benefit of customers in the boardroom is contingent on the value, rarity, inimitability, and organizational fit of customer resources. Specifically, they find that a customer on the board is more effective when demand uncertainty is high but is less effective when the firm is highly diversified. Moreover, a board member who is an independent director of the customer firm is less effective than a board member who is an executive at the customer firm. The authors also find that research and development intensity partially mediates the relationship between customer presence on the board and firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have expressed concern that marketing’s influence at the strategic levels of the firm is waning. Consistent with this view, only 2.6% of firms’ board members have marketing experience. The authors suggest that this is short-sighted and that including more marketing-experienced board members (MEBMs) will increase firm growth by (1) helping firms prioritize growth as a strategic objective and (2) contributing their expertise to improve the effectiveness of revenue growth strategies. Drawing on the behavioral model of corporate governance, the authors develop a theoretical framework explicating the situational, dispositional, and structural influence moderators that alter the impact of MEBMs on firm growth. Using 64,086 director biographies from S&P 1500 firms, the authors find that MEBMs positively affect firm-level revenue growth and that this relationship is strengthened or weakened by important contingencies that occur in the firm. The findings suggest that the common practice of not including experienced marketers on boards of directors puts firms at a competitive disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]