Anthology for Kjell Grønhaug in Celebration of his 70th Birthday

Citation

Henry, P. (2006), "Anthology for Kjell Grønhaug in Celebration of his 70th Birthday", Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 103-104. https://doi.org/10.1108/13522750610640585

This book was written by female academics as a tribute to Professor Kjell Grønhaug of the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration. The fact that few researchers have anything substantial written in their honour attests to Grønhaug's impact. Each of the contributors in this 12 chapter book warmly acknowledges his strong influence and support in their academic development. The breadth of topics covered in this book range across marketing, organisation and management, sociology, and strategy reflect Grønhaug's own diversity of interests. Despite the range of research arenas a common theme running through the book is the need to appreciate the multifaceted and dynamic nature of social relations and business environments. In particular, contributors emphasise that multi‐method approaches are appropriate when seeking to capture the complexity in contemporary real‐world consumer and business settings.

The opening five chapters focus on marketing. In chapter one, Gilmore – who co‐authored the book, Qualitative Marketing Research (Sage 2001) with Grønhaug – highlights the importance of a well‐balanced management style for service industries such as sustainable tourism marketing. “Balance” includes managing often conflicting goals of attracting visitors and revenue, with conservation of the natural environment, and the social wellbeing of local communities. Gilmore shows how the “product” experience derives from a combination of the natural and social environment. Service employees are typically drawn from the local community and their enthusiasm for the project is critical to customer satisfaction. Hence, environmental degradation not only weakens the aesthetic appeal of the service‐scape, it results in less commitment on the part of employees which impacts service quality. Another chapter in the marketing section also addresses managerial issues. Here, Silkoset explores the role of co‐operative marketing efforts by individual businesses within a ski resort. “Co‐market” orientation is found to maximise the individual businesses collective interests. Other chapters examine consumers in terms of the effects of tourism motivations on satisfaction; how economic decision‐making is negotiated between couples; and how past experience with financial deprivation has a lasting effect on future consumption decisions.

Two chapters on the management of organisations follow. Both examine the methodological challenges in studying organisations under natural and real‐time conditions. Mikkelsen points out that randomised controlled trial is the ideal for demonstrating effect of interventions. However, the continuous change and restructuring going on in most modern organisations prohibits this approach. This means that the “stable field laboratory” no longer exists. She demonstrates the use of multi‐method approaches including quasi‐experimental studies, natural interventions and action research to isolate the effects of organisational interventions. By drawing on the process methods literature, Stensaker and Haueng tackle the challenges of studying real‐time organisational change processes. In particular they discuss the difficulty of analysing different forms of data that is often not readily comparable, and “tends to be fluid, eclectic and noisy”.

The third section consists of two chapters with a sociological bent. Both focus on females. Caldwell and Kleppe find considerable commonality when examining young female achievers in Australia, China, and Norway. They were all found to be adept at manufacturing alternative selves as a flexible strategy in adapting to the increased variety of life domains they must transcend in order to excel. These highly educated women strive to experience the best aspects of both female and male worlds. In doing so, they variously enact alternative gender stances including androgynous, masculine and feminine. For example, they are able to comfortably switch between traditional feminine traits of compassionate, gentle, and sensitive, to masculine competitiveness, analytical, and decisive. Unlike feminist forebears these informants see no contradiction in flexibly adapting by role switching. Despite the use of adaptive strategies Foss – in the ensuing chapter – points out that even in Norway which is considered a leader in providing equal gender opportunities, that few females participate in top management. She explores this paradox finding that the private sector remains less “family‐friendly”, young women still value security over careerism, and females maintain a preference to balance work and play.

The final three chapters switch gears to discussion of business strategy. Falkenberg asks the big questions “what is strategy” and “why some firms are more successful than others”. She argues that successful businesses have moved away from the static top‐down structured process approach, to a more dynamic emergent stance that recognises the instability of contemporary business environments. Prediction has become more difficult and strategic approaches must allow for continuous monitoring and adjustment to the plans. To accommodate this contemporary perspective Falkenberg argues that strategic input needs to be more distributed across the organisation – not just top‐down. Fuglseth then examines how information systems can be deployed to facilitate continuous learning which fosters strategic adaptation. The chapter demonstrates how the potential for information systems is heavily reliant on the management process in which the system is embedded, and also manager's ability to exploit it.

The strength of the book lies in the breadth of topics covered. Given the interdisciplinary approach displaying multi‐method research techniques this book provides much food for thought. In an age where academic specialisation prevails and researchers often confine themselves to narrow fields of study, this book is refreshing. It left me with a sense of enthusiasm to look outside my own research frames and embrace more holistic ways to understand consumer and marketing problems.