ing qualified employees through job products that satisfy their
needs.’^32 In this context it is quite understandable that some should
consider internal marketing as just another name for human
resource management. According to Bateson, ‘At first sight this
appears to be a massive invasion of the prerogative of the personnel
function, and indeed, in many ways it is.’^33 There is, therefore, much
debate and confusion about whether internal marketing is predom-
inantly part of the personnel function or whether it should be part
of the marketing function.
Rafiq and Ahmed, in an attempt to delineate the scope of internal
marketing, clearly define the boundary between marketing and
human resource management.^21 They suggest that ‘the most useful
contributions that marketing can make to the human resource man-
agement area is in the ideas of generating a customer (or employee)
orientation, using a co-ordinated set of promotional or communica-
tions techniques, and internally directed application of marketing
research techniques’ (p. 230). Gilmore and Carson, however, are less
concerned with defining a boundary and more concerned with
adopting an integrative approach to functional responsibility for
internal marketing: ‘internal marketing activity can be deemed to be
an intra-organisational concern transcending all functional bound-
aries, largely dependent on the degree of integrative activity within
company functions’.^34 They go on to suggest that key managers
should take responsibility for the development of internal market-
ing initiatives and cross-functional communications.
Organizational structures must, therefore, be conducive to inter-
nal marketing concepts and philosophies. Traditional vertical
organizations, which are hierarchically structured and functionally
oriented, often optimize individual functions at the expense of the
whole business and the customer. They are not fertile ground for
developing internal marketing initiatives. Market-facing organiza-
tions, on the other hand, which draw key employees together in
multidisciplinary teams, which seek to marshal resources to achieve
market-based objectives, provide the ideal environment for devel-
oping an internal marketing orientation.
Varey attempts to present a model of internal marketing as a
process or mechanism for integrated market-oriented management
which does not assume the pre-existence of structures of organiza-
tion (Figure 5.3).^35 He argues that the effectiveness of the process
modelled depends on an holistic application to achieve an ‘open
system’ form of organization. Adoption of individual elements
The recruitment and internal market domains 319