Patricia McHugh

Institutional logics matter when coordinating resource integration

Resource integration has become an important concept in marketing literature. However, little is known about the systemic nature of resource integration and the ways the activities of resource integrators are coordinated and adjusted to each other. Therefore, we claim that institutions are the coordinating link that have impact on value cocreation efforts and are the reference base for customers’ value assessment. When conceptualizing the systemic nature of resource integration, we include the regulative, normative, and cognitive institutions and institutional logics. This article provides a framework and a structure for identifying and analyzing the influence of institutional logics on resource integration in service systems.

Value Co-Creation in Social Marketing: Functional or Fanciful?

Purpose – Value co-creation thinking is reshaping the understanding of markets and marketing and presents a significant opportunity to develop the theory and practice of social marketing. However, whilst value co-creation offers thought-provoking new directions for the field, applying this theory and its core concepts in social marketing is not without significant challenges. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper that seeks to integrate lessons from social marketing practice with the value co-creation discourse from commercial marketing. Drawing upon two projects that have applied principles of collaboration and co-design, the paper provides a critical perspective on the adoption of value co-creation in social marketing. Findings – The collaborative and emancipatory ambitions of co-creation seem highly compatible with social marketing. However, the paper notes some significant conceptual, ethical and practical obstacles in the path of a workable t...

Systems-thinking social marketing: conceptual extensions and empirical investigations

ABSTRACT Systems thinking dominated the 2015 World Social Marketing conference with the premise that a more holistic approach takes into account all the issues at play for effective change. Augmenting the broadening social marketing literature, we contend that systems-thinking social marketing enhances the field’s conventional behavioural change with concepts of scale, causation, and iterative co-creating change processes for complex health and environmental problems. The results of our empirical Sea for Society study, a sustainable European marine ecosystem examination of what the barriers to change are and how they are interrelated, find systems-thinking social marketing offers the potential to strategically and critically reinforce, not replace, behavioural change campaigns. With systems-thinking social marketing, a coherent theory of change becomes a possibility. Orchestrating social change may become a reality.

From restricted to complex exchange and beyond: social marketing’s change agenda

ABSTRACT The forward thinking body of social marketing knowledge, rooted in commercial marketing tools, suffers from two potentially interlinked crisis of identity. First, there is the question of behavioural change to address difficult social problems. This embraces the development of co-ordinated multi-domain approaches for large scale social transformation. Second, there is the concept of exchange, the defining characteristic of social marketing yet problematic and the least researched of its benchmark criteria. Recognising the centrality of exchange, we address the broadening social marketing discourse, suggesting a focus beyond restricted to complex exchanges. This paper presents the insights from the application of Interactive Management, a system-based methodology, embracing a systemic change and a complex exchange agenda. Our case study finds the contexts for restricted and complex exchanges through barriers as well as structural and influence maps. Understanding complex exchanges closes the gap between the theoretical and practical debates surrounding contemporary social marketing and the role and function of exchange theory.

Non-linear causal modelling in social marketing for wicked problems

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show how non-linear causal modelling knowledge, already accumulated by other disciplines, is central to unravelling wicked problem scoping and definition in social marketing. Design/methodology/approach The paper is an illustrative case study approach, highlighting three real-world exemplars of causal modelling for wicked problem definition. Findings The findings show how the traditional linear research methods of social marketing are not sensitive enough to the dynamics and complexities of wicked problems. A shift to non-linear causal modelling techniques and methods, using interaction as the unit of analysis, provides insight and understanding into the chains of causal dependencies underlying social marketing problems. Research limitations/implications This research extends the application of systems thinking in social marketing through the illustration of three non-linear causal modelling techniques, namely, collective intelligence, fuzzy cognitive mapping and system dynamics modelling. Each technique has the capacity to visualise structural and behavioural properties of complex systems and identify the central interactions driving behaviour. Practical implications Non-linear causal modelling methods provide a robust platform for practical manifestations of collaborative-based strategic projects in social marketing, when used with participatory research, suitable for micro, meso, macro or systems wide interventions. Originality/value The paper identifies non-linear causality as central to wicked problem scoping identification, documentation and analysis in social marketing. This paper advances multi-causal knowledge in the social marketing paradigm by using fuzzy, collective and interpretative methods as a bridge between linear and non-linear causality in wicked problem research.

Tomorrow’s World: Collaborations, Consultations and Conversations for Change

Since their discovery in the 1940s, antibiotics have been heralded as a miracle drug saving millions of lives. Antibiotics have made the treatment of illnesses such as ear infections, pneumonia and pelvic inflammatory disease possible and when used correctly are an important part of our health system. Without effective antibiotics quality of life for individuals and communities will significantly change, making for example, the treatment of cancer or major surgery less safe (Tomson and Vlad 2014). Connected to antibiotics is Antibiotic Resistance (ABR), a phenomenon that causes bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics, making them less effective. ABR is not new and occurs naturally however, the intensity of the ABR spread and its impact on the effectiveness of treatments is of increasing concern (Levy and Marshall 2004). Our continued overuse and misuse of antibiotics has us moving into a post antibiotic era where ABR is one of the world’s most pressing public health problems threatening the quality of life for all mankind (Department of Health 2013).

Evaluate development! Develop evaluation! Answering the call for a reflexive turn in social marketing

For social marketers to become effective change agents, evaluation is important. This paper aims to expand existing evaluation work to empirically respond to Gordon and Gurrieri’s request for a reflexive turn in social marketing using reflexive process evaluations: measuring more than “what” worked well, but also evaluating “how” and “why” success or indeed failure happened.,An online survey, adapting Dillman’s tailored design method empirically assesses 13 reflexive process hypotheses. With a response rate of 74 per cent, regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the proposed hypotheses and to identify the significant predictors of each of the reflexive process relationships under investigation.,The study empirically examines and shows support for three reflexive process evaluation constructs – relationships, knowledge and networking. Network involvement and reciprocity; two process dimension constructs do not exert any impact or predict any relationship in the conceptual framework.,This paper expands evaluation theory and practice by offering a conceptual framework for reflexive process evaluation that supports the logic to be reflexive. It shows support for three reflective process evaluation constructs – relationships, knowledge and networks. Another unique element featured in this study is the empirical assessment of Gordon and Gurrieri’s “other stakeholders”, extending evaluations beyond a traditional client focus to an interconnected assessment of researchers, clients and other stakeholders.

Protocols for Stakeholder Participation in Social Marketing Systems

Stakeholder participation is the systematic mapping of potentially influential actors who can affect or be affected by intervention(s). Literature to date acknowledges the presence and interrelatedness of multiple stakeholders but is extremely limited in its approach on how to systematically identify and encourage stakeholder participation in social marketing systems. To address this limitation, this article responds to Buyucek et al.’s call for “stakeholders to be systematically identified and managed throughout the intervention design, planning and implementation.” This research proposes stakeholder participation as important to social marketing, regardless of whether it is for a single intervention or systems. We describe and demonstrate seven protocols for stakeholder participation in social marketing systems. We apply an illustrative participatory research context that follows the seven protocols of stakeholder participation and their related sets of tasks, tools, and activities and designed to identify, classify, and map stakeholders across marine environmental social marketing domains. The participatory research context illustrates that working “with” stakeholders rather than “on” their behalf can build bridges and transform societies. We then discuss the implications of embedding a stakeholder participation orientation in social marketing systems—for example, the complexities associated with multilevel stakeholder identification, partnership formation, ownership, conflict and continuity, and the value derived from interlocking co-creation and participatory processes for change.