Social marketing theory development goals: an agenda to drive change

ABSTRACT

Environmental, health, and social change is complex and frequently is framed as a problem(s) to be solved. This framing focuses effort on delivery of solutions designed to change systemic environmental, health, and social problems. Theory, an organising framework for effort, remains under-utilised in behavioural and social sciences. An individual psychological lens dominates and emphasis is placed on explaining and predicting individual behaviour and not behavioural change. It is time to break free and deliver frameworks that extend focus beyond individuals to all citizens, and apply new evaluation approaches that assess individual and structural changes. Ten Social Marketing Theory Development Goals (goals) categorised in three groups: (i) research design; (ii) building social marketing theory; and (iii) methodological innovation are outlined to assist social marketers to develop new ways of thinking that will deliver the theory and evidence base needed to outline what practitioners and policy makers should do to effect change.     

Business climate and measured poverty: The evidence across states

The author is grateful to William S. Reece, Charles E. Scott, and participants in the Loyola College Economics Workshop for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper; any remaining errors are, of course, the author's.     

Europe—Past Imperfect

Pegged exchange rates imply instability in domestic economices - a reconstifuted ERM is likely to re-emerage but with special provisino to deal with 'crises'     

Boundary work and tax regulation: A Bourdieusian view

Boundaries are ubiquitous in modern social life, and the work of creating and maintaining boundaries is particularly evident within regulatory fields. Through the analysis of a recent critical incident in the tax field (Arctic Systems) with which the accounting profession is intimately associated, this paper uses a Bourdieusian lens to unravel the relational complexities of the regulation of tax avoidance at the complex and fuzzy boundary between acceptable and unacceptable tax practice. We develop an alternative, relational interpretation of tax regulation and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of regulatory practice within the tax field that also raises questions about regulatory practice more widely. We conclude by highlighting how a move towards ‘relational’ regulation might contribute to improved understanding of regulatory processes and practices.     

Chief executive scanning emphases,environmental dynamism,and manufacturing firm performance

Chief executives must allocate their scarce time for scanning efforts among relevant domains of their firms' external environment and their firms' internal circumstances. We argue that high‐performing CEOs vary their relative scanning emphases on different domains according to the level of dynamism they perceive in their external environments. The concepts of dominant logic and sector importance were used to develop predictions about which external domains and which internal domains should receive relatively more or less scanning emphasis in external environments that, overall, are more dynamic or more stable. A field survey of 105 single‐business manufacturing firms evaluated CEOs' scanning emphases and firm performance. Results indicated that, for dynamic external environments, relatively more CEO attention to the task sectors of the external environment and to innovation‐related internal functions was associated with high performance. In stable external environments, however, simultaneously increased scanning of the general sectors in the external environment and efficiency‐related internal functions produced higher performance. These relationships were strongest between relative scanning emphases among domains and sales growth. We discuss the implications of these results for researchers and practitioners. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Revisiting the Quantitative-Qualitative Debate: Implications for Mixed-Methods Research

Health care research includes many studies that combine quantitative and qualitative methods. In this paper, we revisit the quantitative-qualitative debate and review the arguments for and against using mixed-methods. In addition, we discuss the implications stemming from our view, that the paradigms upon which the methods are based have a different view of reality and therefore a different view of the phenomenon under study. Because the two paradigms do not study the same phenomena, quantitative and qualitative methods cannot be combined for cross-validation or triangulation purposes. However, they can be combined for complementary purposes. Future standards for mixed-methods research should clearly reflect this recommendation.