Organizational learning capacity and internal customer orientation within strategic sourcing units

Abstract

Though an internal customer orientation is believed to be indispensable in meeting the highest quality demands of external customers, little is known about the antecedents of internal customer orientation. In line with the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, our contention is that four first-order factors (team-, systems-, learning-, and memory orientations) collectively contribute to the creation of an intangible strategic resource in the form of “organizational learning capacity” (OLC). OLC, in turn, is positively related to the buyer's customer orientation towards the internal customers in the strategic sourcing unit, as perceived by the internal strategic business unit (SBU) customer. Data from internal customers within 141 strategic dyadic sourcing units in a multinational corporation (MNC) confirm the theoretical model. The results are robust across 1994 and 1999 data, suggesting that learning offers a persistent tool for managing important outcomes such as the degree of internal customer orientation.