Marketing and Sustainability: Business as Usual or Changing Worldviews?

Joya A. Kemper, C. Michael Hall and Paul W. Ballantine
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Joya A. Kemper: Department of Marketing, University of Auckland Business School, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
C. Michael Hall: Department of Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship, UC Business School, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 8041, New Zealand
Paul W. Ballantine: UC Business School, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 8041, New Zealand

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-17

Abstract: Marketing, and the business schools within which most marketing academics and researchers work, have a fraught relationship with sustainability. Marketing is typically regarded as encouraging overconsumption and contributing to global change yet, simultaneously, it is also promoted as a means to enable sustainable consumption. Based on a critical review of the literature, the paper responds to the need to better understand the underpinnings of marketing worldviews with respect to sustainability. The paper discusses the concept of worldviews and their transformation, sustainability’s articulation in marketing and business schools, and the implications of the market logic dominance in faculty mind-sets. This is timely given that business schools are increasingly positioning themselves as a positive contributor to sustainability. Institutional barriers, specifically within universities, business schools, and the marketing discipline, are identified as affecting the ability to effect ‘bottom-up’ change. It is concluded that if institutions, including disciplines and business schools, remain wedded to assumptions regarding the compatibility between the environment and economic growth and acceptance of market forces then the development of alternative perspectives on sustainability remains highly problematic.

Keywords: green marketing; sustainable marketing; sustainable development; sustainability; institutional change; paradigm change; worldview (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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