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The paper aims to investigate how the governance practices of public-sector entities (PSEs) in Tanzania are shaped by competing institutional logics and strategies used to manage the logics.

In the paper, empirical evidence was gathered through documentary sources, non-participant observations and in-depth interviews with members of boards of directors (BoDs), chief executive officers (CEOs), internal and external auditors, senior executives and ministry officials. The data were analyzed using thematic and pattern-matching approaches.

The paper shows that bureaucratic and market logics co-exist and variations in governance practices within and across categories of PSEs. These are reflected in CEO appointments, multiple roles of CEOs, board member appointments, board composition, multiple board membership, board roles and evaluation of board performance. External audits also foster market logic in governance practices. The two competing logics are managed by actors through selective coupling, compromise, decoupling and compartmentalization. Despite competing logics, the bureaucratic logic remains dominant and is largely responsible for variations between the underlying logics and governance practices.

The findings suggest that public-sector reforms in emerging economies (EEs) must account for the fact that governance practices in PSEs are shaped by different institutional logics embedded in socioeconomic, political and organizational contexts and their corresponding management strategies.

Few previous studies explicitly report relationships between institutional logics and the governance practices of PSEs in EEs. The current study is one of few empirical studies to connect competing institutional logics and the associated management strategies, as well as governance practices in EEs in the context of public-sector reforms.

The geographically bounded community is explored as a political jurisdiction. Jurisdictions are important sites as local factors determine which political party is in power and because different professionals work within them. Jurisdictions are, thus, arenas for the expression of public policies, which have significant societal consequences. Specifically, we analyse 18 Danish municipalities and the local constructions of a new health-care organisation's focus either upon citizens in general or upon specific groups of patients. The study shows little evidence of specifically local translations. Instead, the study suggests the choice of focus – and underlying institutional logic – is influenced by the local actors' relationships with an external institutional context. Members of local political parties adopt the ideological position of the national party. Similarly, professionals employed locally push the ideology of their profession.

We bring together the institutional theory literature on institutional logics and the information systems (IS) literature that conceptualizes a relational view of affordances to explore the digital changes unfolding in the delivery of professional services. Through a qualitative inductive study of the development of an app led by a clinician manager in an Australian hospital, we investigate how multiple institutional logics shape the design of affordances when an organization develops new digital technologies for frontline professional work. Our findings show how a billing function was designed into the app by the development team over four episodes to afford potential physician users with billing usability, billing acceptability, billing authority and billing discretion. These affordances emerged as different elements of professional, state, managerial and market logics became activated, interpreted, evaluated, negotiated and designed into the digital technology through the team’s interactions with the clinician manager, a hybrid professional, during the app development process. Our findings contribute new insight to the affordance-based logics perspective by deepening understanding of the process through which multiple institutional logics play out in the design of affordances of digital technology. We also highlight the role of hybrid professionals in this digital transformation of frontline professional work.

Methodological pluralism in consumer research is usually confined to post‐positivist interpretive approaches. Argues, however, that a positivistic stance, radical behaviourism, can enrich epistemological debate among researchers with the recognition of radical behaviourism′s ultimate reliance on interpretation as well as science. Although radical behaviourist explanation was initially founded on Machian positivism, its account of complex social behaviours such as purchase and consumption is necessarily interpretive, inviting comparison with the hermeneutical approaches currently emerging in consumer research. Radical behaviourist interpretation attributes meaning to behaviour by identifying its environmental determinants, especially the learning history of the individual in relation to the consequences similar prior behaviour has effected. The nature of such interpretation is demonstrated for purchase and consumption responses by means of a critique of radical behaviourism as applied to complex human activity. In the process, develops and applies a framework for radical behaviourist interpretation of purchase and consumption to four operant equifinality classes of consumer behaviour: accomplishment, pleasure, accumulation and maintenance. Some epistemological implications of this framework, the behavioural perspective model (BPM) of purchase and consumption, are discussed in the context of the relativity and incommensurability of research paradigms. Finally, evaluates the interpretive approach, particularly in terms of its relevance to the nature and understanding of managerial marketing.

This chapter adopts the midrange theories schema to expand Pels and Sheth (2017) matrix on business models to serve the low-income consumers (LIC): market adaptation, mission focus, radical innovation, and inclusive ecosystems. To this end, it identifies the underlying general business theories (systems theory and neo-classical economics) and ontological theories (positivism and interpretivist) nested in each of the matrix’s four cells.

Understanding the general theories from which concepts and guidelines are drawn allows a two-way contribution. On one hand, it comprehends which other concepts can be integrated into the LIC literature. Alternatively, it highlights what insights generated from the study of the LIC markets bring to these theories.

Dixon recently commented that 50 years ago “marketing management and planning was part of marketing theory, today it seems to be all there is.” There is now a growing fragmentation of marketing thought, and a lack of marketing relevance to critical social and economic questions, that is of increasing concern to both internal and external critics. The purpose of this paper is to explore briefly the evolution of marketing thought over the last 100 years and to suggest a better response to the critics.

The paper comprises an historical review of the development of marketing as a discipline that could lead to a reconceptualization of the field.

Adam Smith emphasised both scale and diversity in markets. However, it was the economics of scale that caught the attention of economists and then of marketing specialists. This incomplete view of Smith limited the scope of marketing thought to single or related products. However, Smith's emphasis on diversity leads, logically and inevitably, to the development of the concept of a marketing system. A set of propositions are then suggested that lead to a generalised theory of marketing based on the marketing system concept.

This approach holds promise of resolving the concerns of both the internal and external critics of marketing, opening the door to a fresh, relevant interpretation of marketing thought that might address the concerns expressed by Dixon.

Addressing calls for broadening social marketing thinking beyond “individualistic” parameters, this paper aims to describe a behavioural ecological systems (BEM) approach to enhance understanding of social markets.

A conceptual framework – the BEM – is presented and discussed within a context of alcohol social change.

The BEM emphasises the relational nature of behaviour change, where individuals are embedded in an ecological system that involves the performances of behaviour and social change within historical, social, cultural, physical and environmental settings. Layers of influence on actors are characterised as macro (distant, large in scale), exo (external, remote from individuals), meso (between the individual and environments) and micro (the individual within their social setting). The BEM can be applied to guide social marketers towards creating solutions that focus on collaboration amongst market actors rather than among consumers.

The BEM contributes to a broader holistic view of social ecologies and behaviour change; emphasises the need for social marketers to embrace systems thinking; and recognises that relationships between actors at multiple layers in social change markets are interactive, collaborative and embedded in dynamic social contexts. Importantly, a behavioural ecological systems approach enables social marketers to develop coherent, integrated and multi-dimensional social change programmes.

The underlying premise of the BEM brings forward relational logic as the foundation for future social marketing theory and practice. Taking this approach to social market change focuses strategy on the intangible aspects of social offerings, inclusive of the interactions and processes of value creation (and/or destruction) within a social marketing system to facilitate collaboration and interaction across a network of actors so as to overcome barriers and identify solutions to social problems.

The purpose of this paper is to proffer an alternative conceptualization of food integrity and a market-based food integrity intelligence system.

Food fraud is interpreted as a symptom of asymmetric knowledge. Consumer collaboration for knowledge exchange and diffusion of innovation (KEDI) safeguards food markets. The concept of communicative action is applied to conceptualize and analyze key elements for designing a collaborative food integrity intelligence system.

The model of market-based KEDI consists of three dimensions: intelligence flows, organization memory, and social sensitivities. Decentralized control is crucial to effect system innovation.

The paper integrates managerial, marketing, and economic approaches and develops a model for managing food integrity intelligence.

As specialisation takes root in human communities, the economics of scale and of diversity come into play. Scale leads to product markets, specialised firms, channels, and to industries. Diversity generates peasant markets, shopping malls, and business eco‐systems. These outcomes are all examples of marketing systems, and are typical of the patterns that emerge, grow, adapt and evolve in complex transaction flows. Marketing systems are multi‐level, path dependent, dynamic systems, embedded within a social matrix, and interacting with institutional and knowledge environments. The purpose of this paper is to outline a number of propositions that might serve as a basis for a theory of marketing systems.

The paper draws on historical research into the evolution of exchange and on examples of markets and exchange practices from marketing, anthropology, sociology, and economics. It utilises results from complex adaptive systems theory, from the networks and markets literatures, and from ecology, to formulate a series of propositions that identify properties believed to be common to all marketing systems.

Marketing systems are identified and categorized as emergent patterns in flows of transactions. In total, 12 foundational propositions are suggested. The propositions are complementary to those suggested by S‐D logic.

This paper offers a fresh approach to the study of marketing systems, developing relevant theory. Marketing systems link micro choices with macro outcomes, with implications ranging from disaster recovery to distributive justice and QOL outcomes.