A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF LOW-LEVEL MANAGEMENT’S ATTITUDE TO MARKETING AND INNOVATIONS IN THE LUXURY FASHION INDUSTRY: PRO - OR ANTI-CSR?

Abstract

The senior management of several luxury fashion businesses proclaim a commitment to sustainability and an engagement in all CSR categories. However, how is this projected in the lower levels of management, i.e. do ‘low-level’ managers exercise their marketing and innovations tasks in a manner compatible with the proclaimed CSR? An investigative pioneering case study of the attitude of the low-level management of top luxury fashion businesses in Prague reveals that their marketing and innovation endeavours have very little in common with the CSR strategies and priorities set officially for the business. The comparative holistic Meta-analysis of three rounds of interviews points to critical problems generated by both systematic and individual deficiencies of the lower level managers that lead to their reduced knowledge and/or interest towards linking the marketing and innovation functions with CSR commands. This new discovery of the asymmetry of the attitude to marketing and innovations has strong implications for management research at the academic level, as well as for the practical drive for a more effective and efficient management. In this paper, the 1st objective identified rather a satisfactory attitude of owners and senior managers, but the 2nd investigative objective showed that low-level management often has a reduced knowledge and/or interest in linking the marketing and innovation functions with CSR best practice. The differences across even the same groups, as well as other intrinsic data proposed with respect to the 3rd objective suggest that the causes for such a deplorable situation are both systematic and individual. The consequences include a loss of clientele. It is amazing that luxury fashion businesses with such developed CSR statements and advertised marketing and innovation actions linked to basically all CSR categories have front-line employees, including managers, who do not share such commitments, and, instead, excessively go into auxiliary aspects and ultimately frustrate CSR approaches.