More publications
Journal of Management Inquiry, Reconciling Pragmatism and Scientific Rigor
by Majken Schultz
Seen through European lenses, American academia is struggling with a disconnection between scientific rigor and pragmatic relevance that has taken hold during the last decades within management and organization studies. The implications are serious: a potential loss of relevance to business and society; a domination of stand-alone-constructs that neglect their intellectual heritage; a limited dissemination of research findings to a relatively small audience; and the institutionalization of intellectual homogeneity within a self-supporting academic community. I explore some of the reasons behind this development and argue that change can only emerge from within academia itself. My hope is that current developments within leading journals and academic institutions might lead to a different future where new voices and a more global outlook will encourage a redoing of American pragmatism at its best.
Journal of Brand Management, Toward a theory of brand co-creation with implications for brand governance
by Mary Jo Hatch og Majken Schultz
In 2004, Prahalad and Ramaswamy analyzed co-creation as a relatively new and critical development within the field of innovation. They provided examples of four building blocks by which co-creation occurs: dialogue, access, transparency and risk. In this article, we relate these elements to the phenomenon of branding, extending the building block framework, using the marketing concepts of brand community and brand co-creation. We use data from a longitudinal case study of the LEGO Group and its brand community LUGNET to derive propositions from our marketing-based reframing of co-creation. Our findings suggest a simplified model based on the dimensions of company / stakeholder engagement and organizational self-disclosure, which we recommend as central concerns to the developing theory of brand co-creation. We conclude by presenting the implications that our work suggests for brand management and brand governance, including the possibility that brands may allow society to regain control over massive international corporations lost during the recent period of globalization.
Journal of Brand Management (2010) 17, 590 – 604.
Journal of Management Inquiry (2010) 19: 274, originally published online 15 July 2010.