Marketing Knowledge Development: The Tension in Integrating Knowledge Generation Approaches into Practice

Abstract

Marketing knowledge, as an academic topic, presents a tension, rather than the resolution of tension, between practice and theory. The different approaches to knowledge development that we identify in this paper stem from different functions internal to the organization, and their different research traditions.  This tension is produced in part from the frequent failure in practice of a range of functions (Human Resources, or Public Relations, or Corporate Communications, or Marketing), to speak to one another across departmental boundaries. One of the reasons for the slow uptake in practice of a true market orientation is due to failures of knowledge sharing within organizations.  In this paper secondary data are analysed to respond to the need for a better understanding of which features of other knowledge generating theories encourage the emergence of antecedents that provide the requisite opportunity to develop marketing knowledge that is needed to build capabilities to enhance market orientation.  A framework for integrating three theoretical approaches is, therefore; identified to be used in developing marketing knowledge. There seems not, as yet, to be anything resembling a rigorous theory or meta-theory that can incorporate the strengths of the existing, competing knowledge generating theories and transcend their respective limitations in marketing knowledge development.  However, the study identifies the complex factors that need to be designed into future research on market orientation and the development of marketing knowledge.