Excellences in internal marketing approach : human resources management as source of competitive advantages

Based on an empirical study done in Italy last February 2009, the paper relates about the actual diffusion of Internal Marketing (IM) approach, with a twofold purpose: a) to analyze the specific knowledge, the functions, the activities and its (in)success in the organizations; b) to study the relation between IM and company’s performances, so that the organizations with the best approach of IM really present the higher level of performance in their respective markets. That is the particular human resource and people management of a “illuminated” organization provide a real competitive advantage versus the competitors. Despite the Internal Marketing has deep roots and can be found a large literature, especially in service marketing literature from ‘70, it seems to be a recent discipline yet, with indefinite boundaries and even still to be systematized, in particular in italian business context. Considered that in the most actual perspective IM identify a particular kind of strategies and policies aimed to attract, motivate, develop and make skilled the best human resources of an organization - in order to pursue the business goals and objectives, improving at the same time their quality of life and maximizing the job and employee satisfaction - the relevance of human resource management is even greater because of the actual economic worldwide crisis. The paper is structured as follows. First, an overview is presented of the theoretical foundations of Internal Marketing approach. Next, the findings of an empirical study directed to the companies classified as the best in 2009 by the Great Place to Work Institute is presented. The paper concludes with a general discussion about the implications of the study and some conclusions, without avoiding to highlight some research limitations and suggests for further research