Reaching the Board: Factors Facilitating the Progression of Marketing Executives to Senior Positions in British Companies
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2008.00581.x |
| Author | Roger Bennett |
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
Reaching the Board: Factors Facilitating
the Progression of Marketing Executives to
Senior Positions in British Companies
Roger Bennett
Centre for Research in Marketing, London Metropolitan University,
84 Moorgate, London EC2M 6SQ, UK
Email: r.bennett@londonmet.ac.uk
The scarcityof marketing executives on theboards of directors of large Britishcompanies
has been the subject of much discussion in recent years. Yet empirical research into the
antecedents of board membership for marketi ng managers has been sparse. This study
surveyed senior marketers in 209 registered companies in the food and beverages
manufacturing sector with the aim of establishing some of the main factors that
distinguishmarketing managers who had attained board levelpositions and those who had
not. Possible determinants of board membership covered by the investigation comprised
the personal background of the manager (elite credentials, functional specialism,
knowledge of general and financial management, social behaviour, emotional intelli-
gence), the competitive environmentof the business, whether marketing performance was
measured systematically, and the degree of the sales orientation of the firm.
Introduction
According to a survey completed by the Char-
tered Institute of Marketing in 2006, only 14 of
the UK FTSE 100 companies had a marketing
director on their main boards (Ronay, 2006).
Corresponding figures for 2004 and 2005 were 12
and 11 companies respectively (Gray, 2004;
Hadden and Duckworth, 2005). Similar situa-
tions applied in earlier years (see Baker and Holt,
2004; Campbell, 2000; Curtis, 1997; Perry, 1998).
Finance executives, conversely, routinely sit on
main boards (Gray, 2004; Perry, 1998). Further-
more, marketing directors have been observed to
remain in their jobs for shorter periods than their
finance counterparts (Murphy, 1998), staying for
an average of just 18 months (Campbell, 2000).
Indeed, within Rogers and Buchanan’s (1989)
sample of 89 British companies that had
appointed a marketing director for their first
time, the majority had dismissed the appointee
within 2 years. Finance directors on the other
hand tend to remain with their employing
companies for several years (Simms, 2003).
The absence of marketers from board level
positions has been deemed unfortunate on the
grounds that marketing plays a key role in the
profit making process of businesses. Indeed,
according to Ronay (2006), it ‘has been demon-
strated very clearly that marketing makes a more
significant contribution to the bottom line than
any other business function’ (p. 34). It followed,
Ronay (2006) continued, that companies that did
not give marketing the attention it deserved (e.g.
through their not having marketers on their
boards) would fail to meet their full potential.
Hadden and Duckworth (2005) similarly com-
mented that because marketing generates a
company’s revenues and can raise income per
customer, someone representing the marketing
function should have a voice at the top level of
decision making within the firm. In many
companies, competitive advantage arises directly
from successful marketing (Curtis, 2004). If there
British Journal of Management, Vol. 20, 30–54 (2009)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2008.00581.x
r2008 British Academy of Management. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford
OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
is no marketer on the board, marketing budgets
might be cut in tight financial situations when,
objectively, they should be increased in order to
stimulate revenues; there may be a lower prob-
ability of a firm delivering customer-focused
strategies, and new market opportunities might
not be exploited (see Doyle, 2000; Gray, 2004).
This paper addresses the issue of how market-
ers can improve their chances of attaining board
level positions. It does this by examining the
impacts on the board room promotion prospects
of senior marketing staff of the main factors that
prior literature in relevant fields has suggested
will inhibit or stimulate an individual’s advance-
ment to a seat on a company’s board. The
investigation contributes to previous work in
the area by testing simultaneously the impacts on
the likelihood that a manager will attain a board
level position of key personal and organizational
variables within a functional area (marketing
and sales) that has proven to be especially
problematic (for reasons outlined in later sections
of the paper) in this respect, and in an industry
sector (food and beverages manufacture) where
marketing is known to be critical for success. It
applies theories of social behaviour relating to
ingratiation and emotional intelligence to a
specific business setting and explores their useful-
ness in relation to a sample of practising
managers occupying top jobs in UK companies.
Rao and Schmidt (1995) noted that very many of
the studies undertaken within the ‘impression
management’ sphere of social behaviour have
made ‘excessive use’ of laboratory experiments
and student samples (p. 92). Also, the authors
commented, these investigations had focused too
heavily on specific variables (notably ingratia-
tion) without taking other contributory factors
into account. The present study incorporates the
potential impacts of ingratiation and emotional
intelligence in a wider framework and employs a
survey methodology involving a sample of real-
life executives. Thus the effects of social beha-
viour variables on board room entry are assessed
relative to other influences, adding thereby to the
growing empirical literature in the impression
management field.
Specific contributions arising from the current
research include the empirical confirmation of the
critical roles of training and experience in
financial and general management for securing
board level appointments (an issue frequently
mentioned by practitioners but rarely tested in a
formal fashion), the examination of organiza-
tional traits alongside personal characteristics,
and the demonstration within the UK context of
the possibility that certain modes of social
behaviour can substitute for elite credentials
among people from non-elite backgrounds who
are seeking places on company boards. (Most
prior work on connections between social beha-
viour, elite credentials and promotion to senior
corporate positions has been completed in the
USA. For reviews see Higgins, Judge and Ferris
(2003), Judge and Bretz (1994), Linden and
Mitchell (1988) and Westphal and Stern (2006).)
An important contribution of the present paper is
to test empirically the proposition (see Curtis,
1997; Gray, 2004; Marsh, 2001) that existing
board members who are not marketers tend to
recognize and value the sales management
function to a significantly greater extent than
they value other marketing specialisms, lead-
ing to sales managers having a higher probability
of being promoted to the board. Specifically, the
study assesses the possibility that sales specialists
have higher levels of ‘emotional intelligence’ than
other marketers, and that it is the exercise of this
emotional intelligence that in reality is associated
with advancement to board positions rather than
sales specialization per se.
Research questions
The study reported in the present paper examined
two major research questions.
1. To what extent do the personal characteristics
of a particular marketing executive determine
the likelihood that the individual will ascend
to a board level position, as opposed to re-
maining in middle management or in a senior
management post below the level of the com-
pany’s board? The personal attributes consid-
ered are (i) whether the individual has elite
social credentials, (ii) the degree of his or her
general (rather than marketing-specific) man-
agement knowledge and experience, (iii) the
nature of the person’s social behaviour, and
(iv) whether the manager possesses high
emotional intelligence in apposite areas. By
‘board’ is meant the top executive decision
making group in a substantially sized business.
In public limited companies, board members
Reaching the Board 31
r2008 British Academy of Management.
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