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Collaboratively Learning Marketing: How Organizations Jointly Develop and Appropriate Marketing Knowledge

Baderschneider, Claus LU (2002)
Abstract
Business organizations increasingly face the problem of how to generate and share knowledge in collaboration with other, separate, business organizations. Researchers in the field of inter-organizational learning have started to study the partner-characteristic, partner-dynamic, and partner-situational factors that influence the process and outcome of such strategic learning collaboration. However, the special knowledge content of this learning has so far not been in focus. Thus, this thesis stresses the importance of the content for the collaborative learning effort.



Deregulation is chosen as a comparatively strong example of a trigger for learning needs by organizations. Marketing knowledge is suggested to be the... (More)
Business organizations increasingly face the problem of how to generate and share knowledge in collaboration with other, separate, business organizations. Researchers in the field of inter-organizational learning have started to study the partner-characteristic, partner-dynamic, and partner-situational factors that influence the process and outcome of such strategic learning collaboration. However, the special knowledge content of this learning has so far not been in focus. Thus, this thesis stresses the importance of the content for the collaborative learning effort.



Deregulation is chosen as a comparatively strong example of a trigger for learning needs by organizations. Marketing knowledge is suggested to be the knowledge content that becomes the most needed in the context of deregulation. Both examples mutually highlight the learning need, which can be expected to be greater than what many individual organizations in deregulating industries are able to learn alone. This is the empirical context in which the thesis pursues the problem of how organizations collaboratively learn through co-producing marketing knowledge and distributing this jointly created knowledge among the collaborating partners.



In order to better understand the joint development and distribution of marketing knowledge, the thesis develops and empirically confronts a framework for collaboratively learning marketing. The conceptual framework integrates parts of organizational learning, strategic collaboration, and marketing. The empirical confrontation of the framework is based on five collaborative marketing learning projects in the electrical energy industry. Field data is collected mainly through participant observations and interviews, taking an interpretively informed systems approach.



The study shows that partner-specific explanations of problems in collaborative learning enable only a partial understanding of the dynamics in collaborative marketing learning. The consideration of the factors introduced by the content of the collaborative learning effort reveals that consideration of the content contributes to the understanding of the collaborative learning dynamics. In addition to specific marketing content, two more relevant factors – internal organizational stability, and business environment changes – emerged empirically. As a result, the framework reflects more of the complexity of collaborative learning efforts. Contrary to popular beliefs of simplicity facilitating implementation, the thesis concludes that simple approaches to collaboratively learning marketing rather tend to hinder the co-production and distribution of marketing knowledge by overly limited considerations of these complex processes. (Less)
Abstract (Swedish)
Popular Abstract in Swedish

Företagen har mer och mer problem att generera och utveckla kunskaper i samarbete med andra, enskilda företag. Forskare inom det teoretiska område kooperativ inlärning har börjat att undersöka hur partnerorganisationer lär sig att samarbeta med varandra. Men det specifika inlärningsinnehållet av denna kollektivt inlärda kunskap är generellt inte något de fokuserar på. Den här avhandlingen sätter innehållet av kunskap i den kollektiva inlärningsprocessen i centrum. Den rollen av kunskapsinnehåll för kollektiva inlärningsprocesser är här eftertraktat genom en undersökning av hur organisationer lär sig marknadsföringskunskap i en industri under avreglering.



Avhandlingen tillägger... (More)
Popular Abstract in Swedish

Företagen har mer och mer problem att generera och utveckla kunskaper i samarbete med andra, enskilda företag. Forskare inom det teoretiska område kooperativ inlärning har börjat att undersöka hur partnerorganisationer lär sig att samarbeta med varandra. Men det specifika inlärningsinnehållet av denna kollektivt inlärda kunskap är generellt inte något de fokuserar på. Den här avhandlingen sätter innehållet av kunskap i den kollektiva inlärningsprocessen i centrum. Den rollen av kunskapsinnehåll för kollektiva inlärningsprocesser är här eftertraktat genom en undersökning av hur organisationer lär sig marknadsföringskunskap i en industri under avreglering.



Avhandlingen tillägger deduktivt utarbetade specifika marknadsföringskunskaper, marknadsföringsprocesser och marknadsföringsstrukturella faktorer, även induktiva faktorer, så som ändringar i näringslivsmiljö och en organisations interna stabilitet till befintliga inter-organisations teoretiska ansatser.



Den presenterade teoretiska ramen är jämförd med fem industriella projekt inom vilka multipla oberoende företag satsade på inter-organisationellt lärande. Den jämförelsen visar att den utvidgade teoretiska ramen hjälper att bättre förstå dynamiken som pågår inom kollektiva inlärningsprocesser. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
supervisor
opponent
  • Professor Axelsson, Björn
organization
publishing date
type
Thesis
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Nationalekonomi, economic policy, economic systems, economic theory, econometrics, Economics, Strategic alliances, Learning content, Marketing, Knowledge, Collaborative learning, Strategic collaboration, Organizational learning, Inter-organizational learning, ekonometri, ekonomisk teori, ekonomiska system, ekonomisk politik, Management of enterprises, Företagsledning, management
pages
388 pages
publisher
Lund Business Press
defense location
EC3 : 207 Ekonomicentrum
defense date
2002-02-25 10:15:00
external identifiers
  • other:ISRN: LUS ADG/SAEK-02-1070 SE
ISBN
91-974074-4-5
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
a3819fab-e8d7-4e51-bf0e-b587221224d0 (old id 20483)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 11:10:08
date last changed
2018-11-21 21:03:04
@phdthesis{a3819fab-e8d7-4e51-bf0e-b587221224d0,
  abstract     = {{Business organizations increasingly face the problem of how to generate and share knowledge in collaboration with other, separate, business organizations. Researchers in the field of inter-organizational learning have started to study the partner-characteristic, partner-dynamic, and partner-situational factors that influence the process and outcome of such strategic learning collaboration. However, the special knowledge content of this learning has so far not been in focus. Thus, this thesis stresses the importance of the content for the collaborative learning effort.<br/><br>
<br/><br>
Deregulation is chosen as a comparatively strong example of a trigger for learning needs by organizations. Marketing knowledge is suggested to be the knowledge content that becomes the most needed in the context of deregulation. Both examples mutually highlight the learning need, which can be expected to be greater than what many individual organizations in deregulating industries are able to learn alone. This is the empirical context in which the thesis pursues the problem of how organizations collaboratively learn through co-producing marketing knowledge and distributing this jointly created knowledge among the collaborating partners.<br/><br>
<br/><br>
In order to better understand the joint development and distribution of marketing knowledge, the thesis develops and empirically confronts a framework for collaboratively learning marketing. The conceptual framework integrates parts of organizational learning, strategic collaboration, and marketing. The empirical confrontation of the framework is based on five collaborative marketing learning projects in the electrical energy industry. Field data is collected mainly through participant observations and interviews, taking an interpretively informed systems approach.<br/><br>
<br/><br>
The study shows that partner-specific explanations of problems in collaborative learning enable only a partial understanding of the dynamics in collaborative marketing learning. The consideration of the factors introduced by the content of the collaborative learning effort reveals that consideration of the content contributes to the understanding of the collaborative learning dynamics. In addition to specific marketing content, two more relevant factors – internal organizational stability, and business environment changes – emerged empirically. As a result, the framework reflects more of the complexity of collaborative learning efforts. Contrary to popular beliefs of simplicity facilitating implementation, the thesis concludes that simple approaches to collaboratively learning marketing rather tend to hinder the co-production and distribution of marketing knowledge by overly limited considerations of these complex processes.}},
  author       = {{Baderschneider, Claus}},
  isbn         = {{91-974074-4-5}},
  keywords     = {{Nationalekonomi; economic policy; economic systems; economic theory; econometrics; Economics; Strategic alliances; Learning content; Marketing; Knowledge; Collaborative learning; Strategic collaboration; Organizational learning; Inter-organizational learning; ekonometri; ekonomisk teori; ekonomiska system; ekonomisk politik; Management of enterprises; Företagsledning; management}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  publisher    = {{Lund Business Press}},
  school       = {{Lund University}},
  title        = {{Collaboratively Learning Marketing: How Organizations Jointly Develop and Appropriate Marketing Knowledge}},
  year         = {{2002}},
}