Leadership versus customer orientation in an innovative enterprise — a contribution to further exploration

The consideration of the multidimensionality and multidirectionality of management science within the research process is currently a very important challenge. The search for dependencies and connections between leadership and customer orientation falls fully into the desired research trend. Both leadership and customer orientation are widely described within management science; however, the connections and dependencies which occur between them still require further, in-depth exploration and knowledge concerning leadership and customer orientation needs to be systematised. This article aims to identify further directions of study into leadership and customer orientation in an innovative company. Additional goals include the systematisation of knowledge regarding customer-oriented leadership and the formulation of research hypotheses which will become the starting point for future studies. The conclusions are supported by the results of a quantitative study which applied the CAWI method to a group of 204 business leaders from North-East Poland. The article presents the results of the preliminary research realized as part of a research grant from the National Science Centre entitled “Leadership and customer orientation in an innovative enterprise”. The results of the conducted research show that customer orientation among business leaders is not uniform and depends on the size of their company, the style of management and the type of innovation implemented by their enterprise.