The intellectual ecology of mainstream marketing research: an inquiry into the place of marketing in the family of business disciplines

Many inside mainstream academic marketing judge the discipline’s influence within the family of business disciplines (as well as in practice) to be in decline. Despite great research productivity, methodologies as sophisticated as any in the social sciences, and a large and rich literature, opinion and evidence suggest that academic marketing is the least influential of the mainstream academic business disciplines. Nevertheless, marketing’s decline is not inexorable. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate this perplexing situation by: (1) assembling and evaluating a number of expert opinions from within marketing; (2) exploring relations and patterns of influence among the leading academic journals in accounting, finance, management, and marketing and evaluating the position and influence of each field; (3) attempting to understand marketing’s problems; and (4) exploring avenues to move marketing back to its once prominent position among the business disciplines.     

The sociology of innovation and new biotechnologies

Understanding the social processes that support innovations in new biotechnologies presents an interesting challenge. Evidence from the Australian bioindustry reveals how the development and integration of new biotechnologies is a dynamic social process. Our findings highlight how new technology acceptance and integration rested on the micro‐politics of sense‐making and relational networking.     

The legal theory of finance and the financial instability hypothesis: Convergences and possible integration

This article presents the legal theory of finance (LTF) and compares it with the financial instability hypothesis (FIH), identifying points of convergence and divergence. The study aims to contribute to the literature by connecting these theories and provides the following main conclusions. First, the LTF incorporates aspects of the FIH, as the theories share several key elements, particularly the presence of fundamental uncertainty, the constraint of liquidity, and the necessity for governments to act as lenders of last resort. Second, the liquidity concept used in the LTF can be better comprehended with the use of Keynesian and post Keynesian literature on the topic. Third, the LTF aims to advance and update certain aspects of Minsky’s theory, particularly with regard to the globalization of markets, power relations, and the interdependencies of the political economy of finance. The study concludes that the theories are more complementary than divergent and future studies should create an analytical framework that integrates the theories’ most insightful aspects.     

Medición y comprensión del comercio de tareas en el sector de los servicios

La revolución de las TIC ha generado un alto riesgo de deslocalización de las tareas más comercializables en el sector de los servicios. Se revisan aquí estudios que proponen indicadores de comerciabilidad de los servicios, exploran las implicaciones de su deslocalización y desarrollan modelos teóricos al respecto. Tanto el nivel de calificación requerido como la comerciabilidad podrían ser determinantes clave de los efectos sobre los salarios y el empleo. Sin embargo, la falta de definiciones consensuadas de comerciabilidad y de datos fiables sobre el comercio de servicios, junto con la dificultad de evaluar la competencia de las importaciones a niveles desagregados, obstaculizan el avance de los estudios empíricos y descubren áreas para futuras investigaciones.     

The ‘light touch’ of the Black Death in the Southern Netherlands: an urban trick?

Although the fanciful notion that the Black Death bypassed the Low Countries has long been rejected, nevertheless a persistent view remains that the Low Countries experienced only a ‘light touch’ of the plague when placed in a broader European perspective, and recovered quickly and fully. However, in this article an array of dispersed sources for the Southern Netherlands together with a new mortmain accounts database for Hainaut show that the Black Death was severe, perhaps no less severe than other parts of western Europe; that serious plagues continued throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and that the Black Death and recurring plagues spread over vast territories—including the countryside. The previous conception of a ‘light touch’ of plague in the Low Countries was created by the overprivileging of particular urban sources, and a failure to account for the rapid replenishment of cities via inward migration, which obscured demographic decimation. We suggest that the population of the Low Countries may not have recovered faster than other parts of western Europe but instead experienced a greater degree of post‐plague rural–urban migration.     

The Endogeneity Problem in Applied Fisheries Econometrics: A Critical Review

Environmental and Resource Economics - The purpose of this essay is to bring attention to some serious problems that exist in econometric application of fisheries economic models. These problems in...     

Contradictions of the Climate-Friendly City: New Perspectives on Eco-Gentrification and Housing Justice

As local governments and corporations promote ‘climate friendliness’, and a low-carbon lifestyle becomes increasingly desirable, more middle- and upper-income urban residents are choosing to live near public transit, on bike- and pedestrian-friendly streets, and in higher-density mixed-use areas. This rejection of classical forms of suburbanization has, in part, increased property values in neighborhoods offering these amenities, displacing lower-income, often non-white, residents. Increased prevalence of creative and technology workers appears to accelerate this trend. We argue that a significant and understudied socio-environmental contradiction also occurs where the actual environmental outcomes of neighborhood transformation may not be what we expect. New research on greenhouse gas emissions shows that more affluent residents have much larger carbon footprints because of their consumption, even when reductions in transportation or building energy emissions are included. We describe an area in Seattle, Washington, the location of Amazon's headquarters, experiencing this contradiction and show a distinct convergence of city investments in low-carbon infrastructure, significant rises in housing prices and decreases in lower-income and non-white residents. We conclude with a discussion of a range of issues that require more attention by scholars interested in housing justice and/or urban sustainability.     

Reviewing the Field of External Knowledge Search for Innovation: Theoretical Underpinnings and Future (Re-)search Directions

The field of external knowledge search for innovation has a long tradition and has inspired several schools of thought resulting in a rich and burgeoning body of research. However, the field suffers from two key limitations. First, the pluralism of research across multiple disciplines impedes our attention to the field as a whole, including its intellectual structure and core ideas. Second, recent developments in the business environment and key new ideas in the field complement taken-for-granted approaches and provide new opportunities for knowledge search. Based on a systematic co-citation analysis, we provide a reflective review of the literature and make several contributions. We integrate existing research across disciplines and offer a synthesis of a fragmented research landscape to present a global view of the field. Moreover, we propose a novel external search concept and introduce the idea of “decoupled search.” Leveraging our synthesis and conceptualization further, we recommend future research directions for the entire field of external knowledge search for innovation.