Maybe I will, maybe I won't: what the connected perspectives of motivation theory and organisational commitment may contribute to our understanding of strategy implementation

This paper reviews the management problem of marketing strategy implementation and proposes some new perspectives on the subject. It begins by criticising Noble's much cited definition of the problem and improves upon it by incorporating Mintzberg's views of the strategy process. It then identifies commitment as an important consideration that emerges from the strategic management literature and notes that this area has been little explored. The bulk of the paper attempts to fill this gap by incorporating concepts from the domain of organisational psychology, particularly Locke's goal-setting theory, Vroom's expectancy theory and Meyer's explanations of organisational commitment. In doing so, it finds that these mature and well-developed areas of work offer useful perspectives on strategy implementation. The paper concludes by suggesting five postulates developed from these theories and five accompanying hypotheses for future empirical work.