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“The Curriculum Transformers” offered a critical reflexive stance in the creation and development of the marketing curriculum. The emphases placed on social, ecological and economic issues questioned the relevance of the existing tenets of marketing in the hope of developing socially responsive marketing curricula.
The concluding part of this chapter identified three Meta themes of the sustainability marketing discourse. The Meta theories of “Moving from rhetoric to actualisation”; “Spaces for dialogue: Creating agents of ideological change and building competencies in sustainability marketing and “Spaces for ideological disruption: The relationship between marketing sustainability consciousness and curriculum redesign” were introduced to highlight how the conventions of marketing theory could be disrupted, debated and contested.
In so doing, this created the ‘researchscape’ to develop the sustainability marketing consciousness and curriculum redesign continuum as the basis to argue for a socially responsive sustainability-marketing curriculum. The discussion that follows is initiated with the introduction of three Meta-themes and proceeds to link them to the sustainability curriculum paradigms of “Curriculum Stagnators”, “Curriculum-non Traditionalists” and the
“Curriculum Transformers”.
6.5Ideological and conceptual mindshift: the implications for a sustainability
138 6.6 “Moving from rhetoric to actualisation”
The analysis of the data showed that the participants acknowledged the need for a sustainability marketing discourse as evident in chapters 4 and 5. However the inertia of knowing about sustainability marketing and the inability to act upon on it, needs to be discussed further.
The introduction of the curriculum paradigms and the themes relevant to these paradigms was examined in chapter 5. The focus on the corporate context of marketing was evident within the framing of the “Curriculum Stagnators” and the “Curriculum-non Traditionalists”. These two curriculum frameworks placed emphasis on the maintenance of the dominant social paradigm of marketing. The dominant social paradigm formed the foundation of knowledge production in marketing often seen in the use of scholastic epistemologies such as textbooks considered appropriate to the marketing curriculum.
In order to move from rhetoric to actualisation, the ‘stagnators’ and the ‘non-traditionalists’
would have to view the sustainability discourse of marketing as being theoretically relevant for the business context. Essentially, the business context for sustainability cannot be contained as just an actionable component through initiatives such as green marketing. This would make sustainability marketing a superficial discourse with a restricted theoretical foundation.
Therefore, the move to actualisation would require the engagement between business and academia to develop the discipline beyond a practice-based ideology and skilling rhetoric. This could be achieved through curriculum redesign, which would engage the discipline and its constituents (students) through the introduction of critical thinking and offering students the option to discuss, debate and contest what is presented to them in the formal curriculum.
Academics remain powerful in determining the choices made for curriculum content and the continuous representation of marketing in its existing format would offer students limited opportunity to engage with socially responsive content. Hence, the question of who would benefit from this type of curriculum would be highlighted. The “Curriculum Transformers”
would perhaps, be the individuals to effect curriculum change and curriculum redesign. This is interrogated further in the next section on agents of ideological change.
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6.7 “Spaces for dialogue: Creating agents of ideological change and building competencies in sustainability marketing”
The ‘silo’ mentality in which academics in this study are engaged does not make visible what others may be doing in the field of sustainability in general and sustainability marketing in particular. The fact that sustainability marketing is a global megatrend that is minimally represented in the curriculum bears testimony to the outdated nature of the marketing curriculum that urgently requires a redesign. However, this can only be achieved through the broader engagement of how sustainability is relevant to the marketing curriculum.
Traditionally, a sustainability discourse would be located in the ‘hard’ sciences disciplines such as the environmental sciences. However, the inclusion of a sustainability discourse in the marketing curriculum would displace an older and historical tradition of marketing theory and make visible the nuances of socially responsive curricula. Therefore, the sustainability megatrend needs integration within the mainstream academic disciplines of the business and marketing domain.
This form of integration would imply that universities (management and academics) would have to take on the call for sustainability discourses to be mainstreamed across disciplines.
Subsequently, such sustainability initiatives could be filtered into individual departments and academic disciplines.
Such a predisposition toward social agency could be considered as moves toward greater levels of sustainability marketing awareness. This would form the basis of sustainability actualisation and serve as a catalyst to speed up the marketing curriculum redesign process. Consequently, those who would know about sustainability marketing, could offer their input in developing the sustainability marketing curriculum and those that do not would be engaged in discussions to consider these issues. Ultimately, such impetus for discussion around belief systems would offer the opportunity for academics and stakeholders alike to consider what the future of marketing might be represented as. The future of marketing is discussed further in the next section.
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6.8 “Spaces for ideological disruption: The relationship between marketing sustainability consciousness and curriculum redesign”
The South African higher education context (discussed in Chapter 2) made a case for developing a socially responsive curriculum, however, it remained at the level of rhetoric for the business and marketing disciplines. It is suggested that higher levels of marketing sustainability consciousness would lead to the disruption of the traditional marketing theory ideology and this could facilitate curriculum redesign.
Sustainability consciousness is considered a multiple theoretical construct that would include the three curriculum paradigms (“Curriculum Stagnators”; “Curriculum non-Traditionalists”;
“Curriculum Transformers” and four thematic categorisations (The sustainability discourse trend/fad; The skilling rhetoric,; Restricted academic agency; and Student participation in curriculum development) proffered in earlier discussion.
Additionally, marketing sustainability consciousness would be linked to the historical development of marketing theory discussed in the literature review. Moreover, this would imply that a critical marketing theory would constitute a component of sustainability consciousness. The representation of the relationship between marketing sustainability and curriculum redesign is illustrated in Figure 6.1.
Figure 6.1: The relationship between marketing sustainability consciousness and curriculum redesign
CS
CT CnT
Sustainability marketing consciousness
Curriculum redesign
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Figure 6.1 suggests that as the level of sustainability consciousness increases, the level of curriculum redesign would also increase. The relationship between sustainability consciousness (represented on the vertical axis) and curriculum redesign (represented on the horizontal axis) is connected to the curriculum paradigms suggested in chapter 5. The first circle (CS) related to “Curriculum Stagnators”, the second circle (CnT) related to “Curriculum non-Traditionalists” and the final circle (CT) referenced the “Curriculum Transformers”.
These circles have been placed on a hierarchy, symbolised by the spatial representation. The representation of the hierarchy was considered necessary as it signals increased levels of awareness of sustainability.
Whilst the “Curriculum Stagnators” would acknowledge the existence of the sustainability marketing discourse, they are limited by their choice to effect marketing curriculum redesign.
The limitations of their choices are based on their acceptance of the existing marketing curriculum and their recognition of sustainability marketing as a tool that that can be used to facilitate the transactional process of marketing. However, the ability to effect change in the curriculum for this grouping would be at developing sustainability marketing theory as well as lecturer competency and capacity.
The “Curriculum non-Traditionalists” appeared to be placed higher on the level of sustainability consciousness and curriculum redesign. This might appear contradictory to the idea that the “Curriculum non-Traditionalists” are not advocates for a sustainability-marketing curriculum. However, this constituency represented the corporate context of marketing that engaged in sustainability marketing efforts on a greater scale as compared to the “Curriculum Stagnators”. Therefore, the representation of “Curriculum non-Traditionalists” as part of curriculum redesign aimed at sustainability marketing would prove valuable. This would be relevant in the context of students who could affect greater levels of change by reconciling the theory of marketing with socially responsive concepts such as sustainability marketing in practice.
The “Curriculum Transformers” are placed on the highest level of sustainability awareness and curriculum redesign. The justification for such an alignment was related to their acceptance of a reconceptualised version of marketing. The alignment of marketing curriculum to the higher goals of people and the planet is negotiated through scholarly engagement with critical theories of marketing. Additionally, the focus on cross-disciplinary university orientations toward sustainability marketing would increase the possibilities for further curriculum redesign.
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The curriculum paradigms suggested by the author, are not a panacea for the introduction of sustainability marketing discourses into the mainstream marketing curriculum. Instead, the curriculum paradigms assist in identifying the levels of awareness of sustainability marketing.
The curriculum paradigms offer a chance to identify how academics view the marketing curriculum. The simplistic response of the introduction of a module in sustainability marketing would not alter the existing dominant social paradigm of marketing theory.
In reality, it would be likely to be constituted as an add-on to existing marketing theory and not new marketing theory per se. Therefore, the intention of this thesis is to present possibilities for how the sustainability marketing curriculum paradigms may be understood, developed and reconstructed for marketing curriculum to reflect a social responsiveness to people, the planet and to the economy. The contribution of this study lay in its epistemological, methodological and ontological questioning of marketing theory and offered an extension to the conceptual and theoretical framework of Arnold and Fisher (1996). Henceforth, consideration for future research is discussed prior to the conclusion of the thesis.