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Marketing and Sustainability: Business as Usual or Changing Worldviews?

Author

Listed:
  • 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
    Department of Geography, University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland
    School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University, 351 95 Kalmar, Sweden)

  • Paul W. Ballantine

    (UC Business School, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 8041, New Zealand)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Joya A. Kemper & C. Michael Hall & Paul W. Ballantine, 2019. "Marketing and Sustainability: Business as Usual or Changing Worldviews?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-17, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:3:p:780-:d:203015
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    References listed on IDEAS

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