Calibrating HRM and Marketing Practices for Job Satisfaction: The Role of Internal Marketing and Internal Market Orientation

Services sector is characterized by greater interactions among employees and the customers of an organizations. Satisfied employees or internal customers can lead to satisfied external customers; thus suggesting the need for calibrating HRM with marketing practices. The higher education sector in Pakistan is no different where increasing competition for quality students and rankings is putting strain on the organizations and their employees, especially the faculty. Internal marketing (IM) that attunes HRM approaches with a marketing paradigm is emerging as a new management tool. It focuses on addressing internal customers’ needs in order to improve organizational performance vis-a-vis external customers. Literature suggests that IM can be achieved through internal market orientation (IMO). Also, the more an organization focuses on IM, the more its employees will be satisfied with their jobs. This paper studies the impact of IMO on IM, the impact of IM and IMO on job satisfaction and the mediating role of IM between IMO and job satisfaction within the context of the higher education sector. For this purpose a quantitative study on 10 different universities and institutes having a management department was conducted. Faculty members and representatives of senior management were targeted for data collection. Results show positive relationships between IMO, IM and job satisfaction; thus extending the theory to the higher education context. From the results it can be concluded that IM is influenced by IMO and is as important for service organizations as external marketing. It further strengthens the notion that without satisfied internal customers in the form of faculty, higher education institutions may struggle to improve their quality, rankings, and financial performance