Orientación al mercado en las ONGD españolasAnálisis de su influencia sobre la innovación y el desempeño

Abstract

The sector of the non-governmental development organisations (NGDO) is undergoing a period of important changes. In order to ensure the success of their activity, these organisations must open their views to other stakeholders. NGDO need a better guidance to other sectors to respond to the changes demanded by the society (CONGDE, 2015), and to ensure the funding of their activities. This strategic challenge must break with some of the classic problems of NGDO, among others, their strong focus on their projects, which has led them to be seen more as managers of resources (Santolino, 2010) than as social transformation organisations. Due to this fact, the adoption and implementation of a market-oriented approach in their strategies can help to improve their intervention, to the extent that the market orientation determines the degree in which an organization is committed with external factors that influence their behaviour (Kasper, 1997). However, there is a weakness in the literature to address this problem. The number of studies which analyses the level of market orientation in non-profit institutions is very limited. Moreover, this scarcity in the literature is even more evident on the case of non-governmental development organisations. This aspect is consistent with the limited number of marketing works related to the scope of the NGDO. However, according to the importance and representativeness of these entities in our society, this fact can be contradictory. Under this approach, the aim of this research is to design a model of market orientation for the Spanish NGDO, in order to explain the structure of this variable in this specific sector, to analyse its importance in improving the performance of the NGDO, and to measure its influence on the innovation and the success of future projects. In order to achieve this objective, we constructed our own database. In it, we included all organizations affiliated to any NGDO Coordinator (national or regional). The data collection was performed on this database, obtaining a final sample of 104 Spanish NGDO. The results have allowed validating a scale of market orientation aimed at measuring this reality in the field of the NGDO, with acceptable levels of reliability and validity. In addition, the results have shown that market orientation has a positive influence on the performance of the NGDO, their capacity for the innovation, and the success of their future projects or actions. As main conclusion, it is important to point out, that this paper specifies the dimensions of the market orientation for NGDO, and offers to their managers a set of recommendations to focus their activity on the value creation, and to manage their relationships with the stakeholders as a means to improve their performace.