Johan Hultman
Professor
”There Can Be Only One?” Towards a Post-Foundational Service Marketing Perspective.
Author
Summary, in English
The field of service marketing is in a state of flux, questioned from the ‘outside’ as well as from scholars ‘within’ the field. Its very foundation, the service definition, is subject to discussion. Three possible trajectories forward can be noticed among scholars from ‘within’ the field in this discussion; the abandonment of service as a general category, the formulation of a new, more defendable service definition, and the ontological re-framing of service as a perspective. What these trajectories to a lesser or higher degree has in common is an inability to incorporate heterogeneous materialities of services, empirically as well as conceptually speaking. Future service marketing is still imagined as an ontological and epistemological obelisk that should either be secured through a better defense (better definitions) or through an offensive maneuver (the marketing of a new marketing logic).
This paper is a call for an opening-up of the obelisk and offers an alternative, post-paradigmatic approach to service marketing as a new logic or a new paradigm. As an example of an opening towards a post-paradigmatic approach, the perspective of actor-network theory (ANT) in service marketing is introduced. However, the version of ANT presented here is less the ethnographical version with a focus on the heterogeneous networks per se. Rather, we present a version preoccupied with the power/knowledge of actant-rhizome marketing services (stressing the often-neglected liaison between Michel Foucault and Bruno Latour) with ominous disciplinary and surveillance capacities.
This paper is a call for an opening-up of the obelisk and offers an alternative, post-paradigmatic approach to service marketing as a new logic or a new paradigm. As an example of an opening towards a post-paradigmatic approach, the perspective of actor-network theory (ANT) in service marketing is introduced. However, the version of ANT presented here is less the ethnographical version with a focus on the heterogeneous networks per se. Rather, we present a version preoccupied with the power/knowledge of actant-rhizome marketing services (stressing the often-neglected liaison between Michel Foucault and Bruno Latour) with ominous disciplinary and surveillance capacities.
Department/s
- Department of Service Studies
Publishing year
2008
Language
English
Document type
Conference paper
Topic
- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Conference name
US Academy of Management Critical Management Studies Research Workshop
Conference date
2008-08-07 - 2008-08-08
Status
Unpublished