Katy Mason

Learning to Build a Supply Network: An Exploration of Dynamic Business Models

Firms are confronted with the challenge of learning how to develop and manage supply networks, which reduce their operating costs and maximize their effectiveness in the marketplace. In pursuit of such goals they are increasingly turning to the use of dynamic business models. Dynamic business models represent continuous change and therefore make firms learn constantly new and better ways of doing things. These changes are manifestations of inter-firm knowledge transfer. The aim of this research is to explore dynamic business models as an example of inter-firm knowledge transfer. Adopting a case study approach, we examine three components of dynamic business models network structure, inter-firm routines and knowledge forms and describe their integration through a problem solving approach to building an offshore supply network. Our empirical findings suggest that dynamic business models help organizations identify and link key actors with each other (at the firm and individual level), and aid the identification and specification of appropriate knowledge types and knowledge transfer mechanisms for different actors, in different contexts.

Exploring the performativity of marketing: theories, practices and devices

The academic discipline of marketing has been understood and, some may argue, has been designed to be performative. That is, the theories and models developed in marketing are typically intended to bring about effects, rather than simply to describe. Since its inception in the early 1900s,1 the discipline has concerned itself with developing theories and tools that can be picked up and put to work by marketing practitioners. Examples of such theories and tools include models of market segmentation, marketing communication, consumer behaviour, branding and marketing strategy frameworks, which can be found in most marketing textbooks. Its purportedly close link to practical business problems may have contributed to make marketing a popular subject, equipping students to make practical, valuable judgments about markets and marketing activities. However, over the past 20 years, the academic discipline of marketing has become increasingly concerned about a ‘practice-theory’ gap and the diminishing practical value and relevance of its theories, practices and devices.Calls for marketing scholars to turn their critical analysis onto themselves, their scholarly activities and the types and presentations of theory they produce, abound (Maclaran, Miller, Parsons, & Surman, 2009; Tadajewski, 2010). Such calls have questioned both the purpose of theorising and the relationship between theory and practice in marketing. Brownlie, Hewer, and Ferguson (2007) observe that accounts of the gap between marketing theory and practice typically employ the rhetoric of ‘distance’ between cultures: between the worlds of ‘scholarship’ and ‘practice’. By taking an interest in the performativity of marketing – how marketing theories not only describe reality but contribute to bring that reality about – this Special Issue presents one way of rethinking the relationship between theory and practice. It directs our attention to the concrete ways in which marketing ideas travel between actors (from marketing practitioners to marketing scholars and vice versa) and how such ideas become increasingly abstracted or concretised in that process (Czarniawska & Sevon, 1996; Latour, 1986, 1999). Brownlie et al. (2007) further point out that we have a very limited understanding of how ‘relevance’ might be accomplished and performed (also see, Maclaran et al., 2009). Here, a performative stance encourages us to empirically investigate how marketing theories are made to matter in specific situations. Studying the performativity of marketing offers a response to calls for marketing researchers to reflect on their roles during and after research encounters (Wallendorf & Brucks, 1993) by advancing reflexive resources beyond researcher introspection.This Special Issue, ‘Exploring the Performativity of Marketing: Theories, Practices and Devices’, tries to address these concerns by asking: ‘how is marketing theory performative?’ The individual contributions look at how marketing theories are used in practice and what this means for our understanding of the practicing–theorising landscape of marketing. The issue comprises 10 empirical studies that inquire into how, why and to what effect marketing theories are used and ‘performed’ in marketing practice. We begin this editorial by considering what performativity is and how this concept is used in the marketing literature. We then consider three themes concerning the performativity of marketing that emerge from the articles. Finally, we summarise the implications of these themes and sketch a few research areas for further developing our understanding of the performativity of marketing.

Impact and Management Research: Exploring Relationships between Temporality, Dialogue, Reflexivity and Praxis

This paper introduces the special issue focusing on impact. We present the four papers in the special issue and synthesize their key themes, including dialogue, reflexivity and praxis. In addition, we expand on understandings of impact by exploring how, when and for whom management research creates impact and we elaborate four ideal types of impact by articulating both the constituencies for whom impact occurs and the forms it might take. We identify temporality as critical to a more nuanced conceptualization of impact and suggest that some forms of impact are performative in nature. We conclude by suggesting that management as a discipline would benefit from widening the range of comparator disciplines to include disciplines such as art, education and nursing where practice, research and scholarship are more overtly interwoven.

Flexible business models

Purpose – The aim in this paper is to describe and explain the flexibility offered by different business models adopted by different firms as they strive to achieve higher levels of business performance.Design/methodology/approach – Cross‐sectional research is used to investigate a matched pair sample of 20 high‐performing and 20 low‐performing firms in the UK. The relationship between business model architectures and focus are examined and their implications for flexibility are illustrated and discussed.Findings – The flexibility offered by different business models is explored through the way organisations select and integrate three inter‐related elements to devise flexible business models, i.e. network influence, transactional relationships, and corporate ownership. Affected by situated practices in each business network and the market position or business size, companies select and integrate various configurations of these elements to respond to the constantly evolving demands of end‐customers.Researc...

What are bottom of the pyramid markets and why do they matter

There are thousands of journal articles that concern themselves with markets at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP).1 What is there to say that hasn’t been said already? In 2002, an article published in the Harvard Business Review (Prahalad and Hammond, 2002) brought to the forefront of business and academic attention a ‘missing market’ that was claimed to be lying dormant, ignored by international and multination corporations yet worthy of attention for its potential to contribute to both economic and social prosperity. The notion of markets at the BoP is concerned with providing the ‘poor’ in developing and emergent economies with access to markets. Prahalad and Hammond (2002) champion the needs of the ‘invisible poor’ to the marketing efforts of multinational corporations. Prahalad and Hammond’s (2002) assert that the poor as ‘consumers’ constituted a sizeable market opportunity but this view has been criticised. In this essay, we explore how BoP markets might be reconceptualising to better shape interventions that relieve poverty.

Market sensing and situated dialogic action research (with a video camera)

This paper explores the practice of market sensing through situated dialogic action research. The paper discusses collaborative encounters with a manager who kept a video diary of his work. Through the analysis of five ‘generative moments’ that emerged from the market sensing dialogue between researching-practitioner and practising-researcher, four distinct bundles of market sensing practices are identified; sensing, sense making, framing and reflecting. Dialogue is found to be central to the entanglement and disentanglement of market sensing practices and emergent market frames. Dialogue allows the identification and exploration of tensions and conflict in existing and competing market frames. This in turn generates new and innovative ways of framing markets for future action. Thus, situated dialogic market sensing emerges as an effective way of unearthing and exploring competing market frames and as a mentoring, reflective and reflexive part of market sensing practice.

Informing a new business‐to‐business relationship:: Corporate identity and the emergence of a relationship identity

Purpose – Firms face the challenge of working with other firms in their business network so as to increase the value of products and services offered to end customers and consumers. This often requires managers to invest in developing strong and effective business‐to‐business relationships. While an extensive literature examines the different dimensions of successful business‐to‐business relationships, little research examines how perceived corporate identity is likely to influence market relationships. This paper aims to explore how a buyer and supplier draw on their own identities and the identities of each other in ways that enable them to develop a basis on which to conceptualise and operationalise a strategic sourcing relationship. Specifically, the paper seeks to investigate the emergent relationship identity that results from buyer‐seller interactions.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses an in‐depth, longitudinal case study of a buyer‐supplier relationship which involves an engineering buye...

Shared learning in supply networks: evidence from an emerging market supply network

Purpose – Firms face the challenge of developing learning capabilities that enable them to work as part of an effective business network. While an extensive literature examines learning capabilities within the firm, little attention has been given to shared learning that occurs between networked firms. This study aims to explore how a manufacturer and businesses services provider learn to develop their supply network. Specifically, this research investigates four areas of shared learning that are central to supply network success, and discusses the development of shared learning capabilities within a supply network. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents an in-depth, longitudinal case study of a supply network that involves an engineering company and two business services suppliers. Findings – The study suggests that developing shared learning capabilities in four key areas is imperative for network success: business relationships, customers’ desired values, firm boundaries, and network structures. Furthermore, there are three distinct types of shared learning that were common to all four areas of shared learning identified. These are: strategic shared learning, operational shared learning, and exchange shared learning. Research limitations/implications – The research findings are based on a single case study. Additional research across multiple case studies is needed in order to verify the findings reported. Practical implications – The four learning areas have significant managerial implications for the way managers develop mechanisms to capture and share learning associated with developing supply networks. Originality/value – This research addresses a gap in the literature concerning the areas of learning capabilities for developing a supply network. The findings are important to research and practice with regard to how companies develop learning capabilities.

Management Education in Turbulent Times: Journal of Management Education Special Issue

We face a period of considerable economic turbulence and political uncertainty: political movements are producing extreme candidates who are nevertheless popular; international alliances and trading blocs are beginning to fracture; instability and civil war in the Middle East seems insoluble; and the growth engines of developing economies have begun to show signs of stuttering. Our key question is simple: As educators, what should we be doing, and helping future managers learn how to do, to deal with turbulent times? Addressing these issues requires an openness to nontraditional approaches, and for that reason this Call is deliberately broad. There may be many approaches that are useful for addressing these challenges in management education. We highlight three (among many others) here.

Performing a Myth to Make a Market: The construction of the ‘magical world’ of Santa:

If you believe in Santa, do not read this paper. Through an in-depth, qualitative, empirical study, we follow the Santa myth to a remote northern location in Lapland, Finland where, for one month a year, multiple actors come together to create a tourist market offering: the chance to visit Santa in his ‘magical world’. We explore how the myth is transformed into reality through performative, organisational speech acts, whereby felicitous conditions for the performance of visits to Santa are embedded in a complex socio-material network. We develop the performative turn (Gond et al., 2016) in organisational studies by introducing a new category of speech act, ‘translocution’, a compendium of imagining, discussing, proposing, negotiating and contracting that transforms the myth into a model of an imaginary-real world. Through translocutionary acts, actors calculate, organise the socio-material networks of the market, and manage the considerable uncertainty inherent in its operation. Details of the myth become market facts, while commercial constructs fade into the imaginary. The result, when felicitous conditions are achieved, is a ‘Merry Christmas’ of magical, performative power.