Matthew Higgins

Cause-related marketing: Ethics and the ecstatic

This article evaluates the ethical implications of the practice of cause-related marketing (CRM). The authors note howCRMis consistent with a contemporary rhetoric that argues that consumers are displaying a developing interest in the social commitments of the corporate world. However, following the work of Zygmunt Bauman, the authors suggest that CRM actually threatens these sentiments. Of particular significance is its incorporation of a charitable act within an act of exchange that is mediated by marketing technique. This serves to prevent any encounter with Bauman’s “Other.” Instead, the pretense of engagement has to be preserved by increasingly vociferous avowals of concern. These become examples of the ecstatic, a seductive force that renders the extreme meaningless and amoral. Finally, the authors argue that the nature of ethical commitment produced by CRM cannot be divorced from the instrumental benefits that are generated.

Anti‐corporate protest as consumer spectacle

Across much of the developed and developing world the last few years have been marked by protest against institutions and corporations. Much has been said about the significance of these protests, indeed books broadly supportive of anti‐corporate protest compete for ratings against management gurus in the best selling business book charts. In this paper we explore how the technology of marketing is implicated within the organisation and representation of anti‐corporate protests. We argue that the cynical and unreflexive manner in which cultural critics engage with marketing, and their attempts to distance marketing from activities that they privilege, may have consequences for the anti‐corporate movement. This paper concludes with a sense of pessimism about the current tactics employed by anti‐corporate protestors but hope in the potentiality of marketing to develop a sense of individual responsibility.

Recatechizing codes of practice in supply chain relationships: discourse, identity and otherness

Continuing calls by fair trade groups for higher ethical standards in supply chain management present a significant challenge for the marketing/purchasing managers who must make sense of and labour within inter‐organisational relationships. This paper considers the role of Codes of Practice in offering assurance to stakeholders in these relationships. Situating Codes within the discourse of relationship marketing, we analyse claims that the rhetoric and reality of Codes differ and, furthermore, we examine what this alleged gap means for decision‐making by individual managers. Whilst conventional ‘rhetoric and reality’ critiques outline some of the problems with Codes, the solution appears to be a call for a universalised code, improved drafting and policing. Although this dichotomy provides some insight, we believe that a more productive line of enquiry is to view Codes, and the discourses surrounding them, as texts. The papers contribution lies in recatechising the roles of Codes of Practice at two levels: conceptually and empirically. The former examination is undertaken by problematising the literature devoted to conventional critiques of Codes. In the latter approach, through an examination of a Code produced by a UK manufacturer and a series of managerial interviews, we move on to explore how Codes may (or may not) assist in shaping the identity and positioning of stakeholders within the supply chain. We conclude by suggesting that Codes represent a discursive site where the idealism of ethics meets the reality of business. Rather than perceiving this as an example of agon, we argue for the need to appreciate the centrality of ambivalence within the lived experience of marketing/purchasing managers. This has implications for the way in which we perceive ‘ethics’ and ‘fairness’ within supply chains and the manner in which we frame our engagements with Codes of Practice. We aim to show how a more subtle understanding of social constructions of managerial identities and ‘the other’ within the language of supply chain ethics may facilitate moves towards strategies of fairer trade.

Of a complex sensitivity in marketing ethics education

Abstract This paper scrutinises the way in which ethics is taught in the modern marketing syllabus. Our intention is to open up a space within which to promote timely debate on contemporary marketing education. Specifically, we wish to ask whether the tutors role as a conduit of apparent ethical knowledge to students has somehow failed to map with sufficient sensitivity the terrain of the moral impulse in business practice. Drawing on literature from educational philosophy and the work of Emmanuel Levinas, we argue that the conceptualisation of ethics in marketing cannot be divorced from the question of pedagogy and the responsibilities of the tutor. This reading of ethics in marketing leads us to suggest that the largely conventional model adopted for the teaching of marketing may be unsatisfactory. Whilst current approaches may provide students with a prescribed set of knowledge and skills, it may by the same token refuse us the moral education that seems to be necessary. The significance for the teaching of ethics in an atmosphere punctuated with the discourses of economic crisis is acknowledged. We call for a reappraisal of the tutor/student relationship such that we may facilitate a greater understanding of how marketing students can make sense of themselves and of ‘the Other’. To begin the process of articulation, we offer an example drawn from nursing education. Through this, we consider the requirements of the capable moral educator and offer initial practical suggestions on how this could be incorporated within teaching.

The abject single: exploring the gendered experience of singleness in Britain

Abstract This paper explores the gendered experience of singleness in Britain through a theoretical and empirical understanding of the abject. Drawing on the writings of Judith Butler, we argue that singleness is culturally pathologised as an abject ‘other’, a liminal state which renders the legitimation of the single subject unintelligible. Through 14 active interviews with British singles, we demonstrate how our participants negotiate their marginal status vis-à-vis the marketplace and the broader society that continue to uphold heterosexual partnership as a normative form of intimacy. Our data uncovers persistent and powerful gender stereotypes of how singles ought to organise their lives and conform both to social, as well as market-driven pressures. We therefore highlight research gaps in the experience of singleness and critique the heteronormative framework that remains dominant, yet concealed, in gender research.

Legacy, trust, and turbulence in the NHS healthcare commissioning process: An exploratory study

Abstract The Health & Social Care Bill has focused attention on the commissioning processes evident within the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Wales. Through a detailed exploratory empirical study of commissioning in the NHS, this paper examines how the implicit models constructed through the discourses surrounding the Bill create tensions for the existent commissioning process. Significantly for the research and more broadly in terms of healthcare policy, it highlights the centrality of legacy and trust when considering the introduction of change. The changed nature of the relationships within the commissioning process has wider implications on the commissioning partners, influencing strategic direction, and investment in innovation.

Becoming invisible: The ethics and politics of imperceptibility

This speculative essay examines ‘invisible’ social identities and the processes by which they are manifested and occasionally sought. Using various literary and academic sources, and loosely informed by an unlikely combination of Stoic philosophy and post-structuralist politics, we argue that invisibility is conventionally viewed as undesirable or ‘suffered’ by individuals or groups that are disadvantaged or marginalised within society. Whilst appreciating this possibility, we argue that social invisibility can also be the result of strategies carefully conceived and consciously pursued. We suggest that forms of social invisibility can be acquired by ethically informed personal action as well as by politically informed collective action. In this context, invisibility can be seen as a strategy of escaping from institutionalised and organisational judgements and which presents a challenge to common notions of voice and identity.

Exploring the development of relationship marketing in the National Health Service: An empirical analysis of supplier–purchaser relationships in a quasi-market environment

Abstract This paper attempts, through empirical research, to examine the extent to which the principles of relationship marketing have been developed within the National Health Service (NHS) in England. It examines the propensity for NHS Trust acute hospitals to develop strategic relationships with Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and other secondary care purchasers. Within the discussion, consideration is given to the impending changes to the NHS being introduced by the UK coalition Government. The findings from this study appear to support the argument that the manifestation of relationship marketing within the health service takes a particular, and perhaps peculiar, form and have not yet developed into the customer focused relationship marketing found within commercial organizations.