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A market-oriented culture stimulates a firm’s success over the long term. However, firms report limited success in developing such a culture. How can a company become more market-oriented? The extant research indicates that a culture of market orientation can appear and be maintained informally (emergent) and formally (deliberate) in an organization. These two approaches are not incompatible, but can instead be reconciled to better secure the cultural transformation processes of the firm. The choice of leader is decisive. The purpose of this paper is to examine what type of leadership reconciles the formal and informal approaches to market orientation.