Strategy implementation: the implications of a gender perspective for change management

Abstract

The implementation of strategic marketing plans remains an elusive goal for many organisations with many managers knowing what to do but not how to do it. A relevant question relating to the implementation capabilities of managers regards the characteristics of successful implementors. This question highlights several interesting issues, including the impact of manager gender. The current paper reveals the role of female managers in implementing new management techniques in sales organisations—namely, the introduction of behaviour‐based management control strategies as an indicator of a possible gender dimension in more general implementation capabilities. We summarise the findings from single company and multi‐company studies where the implementation capabilities of male and female field sales managers are examined. The provocative conclusion is that superior implementation capabilities are shown by female sales managers in the implementation of behaviour‐based control strategies. We suggest this finding may provide insight into implementation capabilities in strategic marketing and more generally.

Keywords:

• Strategy implementation
• gender
• behaviour‐based control
• sales management
• relational selling