Critical realist multilevel research in business marketing: a laminated conceptualization of resilience

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to ease the methodological application of critical realist multilevel research in business marketing. Although there has been plenty of theoretical contributions in this field, it is not always clear how critical realism can be best applied in business marketing settings. Accordingly, this paper addresses this gap in literature. Also, this paper addresses the calls for a multilevel conceptualization for resilience, based on the critical realist laminated systems. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper, which uses pre-existing literature to develop a critical realist methodological approach for the purposes of multilevel business marketing research. The contribution is based on literature by combining pre-existing ideas in a new way in the context of business marketing. Findings This paper makes a methodological contribution by introducing the critical realist “laminated systems” to business marketing as a multilevel research approach. Furthermore, the authors conceptualize a specific laminated model, the Laminated Interactional Model (LIM), that is designed for the purpose of business marketing research. The LIM is a methodological tool that conceptualizes business marketing based on six levels of analysis, easing the methodological application of critical realism in business marketing settings. In addition, to provide an example, the authors apply the LIM to the literature on resilience, providing a multilevel conceptualization. This is a timely contribution, as resilience has emerged as a central concept addressing interorganizational survival during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originality/value This paper makes three main contributions to business marketing. First, this paper provides a methodological contribution by introducing the critical realist notion of “laminated systems” to business marketing. Second, this paper conceptualizes a specific laminated model for business marketing, namely, the LIM. Third, as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper will apply critical realism and the LIM to the notion of resilience, addressing the calls for multilevel conceptualizations.

Dialectic critical realism in business marketing: dialectic customer portfolio management

“…Furthermore, all four moments of DCR provide an ontological expansion to the current scope of portfolio theory: the first moment (“non-identity [4]”) brings customer portfolio management to bear upon the CR notion of ontological depth. This moment is consistent with traditional critical realism that pre-dates the more advanced theoretical developments of DCR (Easton, 2010; Peters et al , 2013; Ryan et al , 2012; Easton, 2002; Peters, 2016; Vanharanta and Wong, 2022; Ehret, 2013). The second moment (absence/negation) motivates the dialectic process by emphasizing what is missing in a portfolio, which is captured by the broad umbrella concept, “absence”.…”

“…Vertical realism concerns “internal relations” and “relational structures” that bring about the irreducible emergent properties investigated by business marketing scholars (Ehret, 2013; Vanharanta and Wong, 2022). In terms of the CR vocabulary, the term “relations” refers to the “properties possessed by things in virtue of their positioning in respect of other things”.…”

Editorial: Business-to-business marketing: imagining something different

“…Vanharanta and Wongdialectic customer portfolio management Vanharanta and Wong (2023) present a new and interesting formalization of critical realism that is open to change according to a dialectic mechanism, which they present in some detail. Building upon earlier formulations of the dialectic, concerning thesis, antithesis, synthesis (for an overview of the dialectic, see Bhaskar, 2008;Lefebvre, 2009;Putnam et al, 2016), the authors propose a model of dialectic change which is argued within the field of portfolio management of business relationships.…”

“…This issue of reification deserves considerably more deep and slow research (see Blumer, 1954), because as academics wanting to publish we face editors and reviewers looking for answers that are unitary/complete. Yet, we live in a business world that is open and changing, which is why Vanharanta and Wong (2023) idea of an open totality is important: there is a strong link to a key aspect of the phenomena we study.…”

“…One can ask, how does one note absences, by what formulation, by what system of knowledge, by which ontological perspective and so on, and find interesting questions to consider. Vanharanta and Wong (2023) open up general research questions, which given the exploratory character of the article is sensibleone would not at this early stage want to be overly prescriptive. There remains considerable theoretical work to manage research of absences, since any such phenomenon relies for its detection upon a lens which focuses also on a context or else how is an absence noted, e.g.…”