Abstract
Conflict within the marketing-finance interface is highly conducive to destructive leadership patterns, especially among top leaders in an organization. Through qualitative depth interviews with marketing and finance leaders in two large firms, we identify four areas of conflict triggers that facilitate destructive leadership patterns that undermine organizational goals: Time Orientation, Budget Approach, Lack of Trust, and Risk Orientation. Our findings indicate that finance managers tend to have a shorter-term focus on revenue, prefer top-down budgetary models, sometimes view their role as an overseer when interacting with marketing counterparts, and are more risk averse. Conversely, marketing managers prioritize the long-term health of the brands they manage, prefer bottom-up funding approaches that align marketing objectives with budget, seek autonomy in achieving organizational objectives, and have a higher appetite for creative risk-taking. Having identified these points of conflict, this work provides suggestions to foster more healthy working relationships and help overcome trigger points that can lead to destructive leadership in the marketing-finance interface: enhancing value alignment / setting enterprise-wide goals, increasing organizational support, and expanding role scope.