The impact of aligned rewards and senior manager attitudes on conflict and collaboration between sales and marketing
This research was carried out using five case studies and a survey to discover how sales and marketing managers are rewarded and if alignment of rewards can improve collaboration between sales and marketing and/or reduce inter functional conflict. In addition, it examined the role of senior managers' support for coordination on sales/marketing collaboration. The results reveal that organizations which use aligned rewards can increase sales/marketing collaboration through such reward structures, but not reduce inter functional conflict. In addition, senior managers' support for coordination is vital, as it increases sales/marketing collaboration, and strongly reduces inter functional conflict. This is important because inter functional conflict has a strong negative impact on collaboration between sales and marketing in business to business firms.