Abstract
The threat of rapid and unpredictable climate change means we must urgently transition human lifestyles into a restoration economy, with a focus on restorative development instead of new development or conservation of old modes. To support that project, marketing educators must rethink their discipline and their responsibilities, challenging legacy marketing teaching and ‘business as usual’. To assess current practice, a global survey of 200 marketing faculty identified three clusters by climate consciousness: Engaged, Conflicted, and Traditionalist. Analysis of open-ended comments identified three themes: Felt need for change, Barriers to change, and Action to take. Building on these findings, we identify anti- and pro-restoration mechanisms in our disciplinary practice at societal, university, and individual level. We present those mechanisms in a new framework highlighting the discourses that reinforce and challenge engagement and agnosis. Agnosis is a socio-cultural and psychological phenomenon underlying the current collective failure to engage with climate change. We challenge colleagues to confront agnosis and offer individual, disciplinary, and institutional actions that support transition to net-zero carbon marketing logic.
Introduction
The powerful tools of marketing have driven the greatest period of innovation and affluence in history, providing consumers in developed economies with unprecedented levels of comfort, cleanliness, and convenience (Rosling, Rosling, and Rönnlund 2018; Shove 2003). However, the activities supporting modernity have created catastrophic levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Our planet is rapidly approaching a climate tipping point. A recently released report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that climate change is an unequivocal threat to humanity and the planet, and that we face a “rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all” (IPCC 2023, p. 25). It reminds us that “(t)he choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years” (IPCC 2023, p. 25). Echoing voices in macromarketing (e.g., Kemper, Moscato, and Kennedy 2022 and Shapiro et al. 2021), this paper calls for urgent transformation in marketing education commensurate with the urgent and critical challenges posed by climate change.
Effective responses to climate change are a matter of life or death. Rather than quick fixes, we need to transform to a restoration economy, that is, “(a)n economic period in which restorative development is the dominant mode (as opposed to either new development or maintenance/conservation)” (Cunningham 2002, p. VII). With respect to climate change, restoration would mean that the GHG emissions associated with overproduction and overconsumption (the main driver of climate change) are drastically reduced on a global level, in accordance with the Paris Agreement. While the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a helpful roadmap, transformation is challenging, as climate change results from the economic activities supporting social life as we know it, which in turn are predicated on a dominant social paradigm (DSP) assuming human dominion, technocratic invincibility, and infinite growth (Catton and Dunlap 1978). The DSP and current approaches to society and economy contradict principles of restorative development (Cunningham 2002). In short, humanity is in uncharted territory.
However, despite increasing frustration among scientists and activists, there is hope. As the IPCC (2023, p. 33) report points out: “Many options are available for reducing emission-intensive consumption, including through behavioural and lifestyle changes, with co-benefits for societal well-being”. On the demand side, this advice encourages consumers from the global north to adapt for their own benefit, as well as for the benefit of the less privileged. On the supply side, we need to stop exploiting fossil fuels now, rather than when shareholders have enjoyed all the returns they possibly can. We need to transition to economic models characterized by circularity, zero waste, and carbon neutral energy sources, and we need to find ways to safely sequester carbon. While some heroic solutions have been proposed, for example, creating a sunscreen from clouds of moon dust (Milman 2023a), technological solutions alone are unlikely to be effective enough, soon enough. Humanity as a whole must urgently confront the logics and practices of ‘business as usual’.
Critical reflection is particularly important for the marketing discipline. Marketing is in the hot seat, as climate change results from overconsumption, in turn a result of logics of growth, competition, and individual choice uncritically embedded in marketing theory and practice (Cabrera and Williams 2014). As a former CEO of the American Marketing Association pointed out: “The very idea of marketing presumes the existence of consumption … we are still largely behaving, measuring, rewarding and even canonizing based on growth” (Klein 2019, p. 1). Marketing educators, including the writers, have taught the logics of overconsumption to generations of marketers (Soule and Sekhon 2022). These growth logics are contrary to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME, n.D.) adopted by many business schools. Despite urgent need for change, marketing departments are working against wider institutional goals and their university's social contract (Helm and Little 2022; Kemper, Moscato, and Kennedy 2022). We need a new vision of marketing where “social impact is no longer a marketing strategy, but a moral imperative demanded of every enterprise or individual proffering some type of value to the consumer” (Klein 2019, p. 1). However, the extent to which marketing educators support this vision or appreciate the need for it is currently unknown.
What are the implications of the end of industrial age business for contemporary marketing education? While the general public (Leiserowitz et al. 2023), scientists, environmental activists, governments, and some marketers (Calvo-Porral 2019; Diaz 2021; Kite and Vanduynslager 2022) recognize that individual and collective sacrifices will be needed to avoid worst case outcomes, most readers will acknowledge that little substantial change has occurred in marketing curricula in the last three decades. A systems view makes the tradeoffs between climate, society, and economy apparent. However, in the marketing discipline, research and teaching has primarily taken an uncritical micro rather than macromarketing approach (Benton 2021). Drawing from neoclassical economic theory, the traditional logic of demand growth creates an ideological framework based on homo economicus, with limited balancing critique (Cabrera and Williams 2014). Some colleagues, like ourselves, discuss linkages between marketing, overconsumption, and climate change in their classrooms. However, for the most part, we observe that the standard ‘business as usual’ narrative remains relatively unchallenged.
With respect to climate change, apart from recent contributions (e.g., Kemper, Ballantine, and Hall 2020; Shapiro et al. 2021), the literature offers limited empirical evidence as to whether marketing educators perceive a need to transform, and no benchmarks to track change in the discipline. In view of this relative silence in the marketing literature, the current study is guided by the following research questions: (1) To what extent do marketing educators perceive a need for change? (2) How are marketing faculty addressing this diffuse, multi-disciplinary, fast-changing, and paradoxical topic in their research and in the classroom? We present findings of a survey of 200 marketing educators, worldwide. Building on Kemper, Ballantine, and Hall (2020), we investigate how marketing educators conceive of sustainability and climate change, and how that awareness translates into academic practice.
With the purpose of supporting marketing educators in rethinking our discipline and our responsibilities we make two important contributions. First, we provide a sense of the global zeitgeist around how marketing educators perceive and act on the threat of climate change. This benchmark will enable assessment of necessary disciplinary transformation, and a means of tracking that transformation over time. Second, we challenge colleagues to confront and address agnosis, a socio-cultural and psychological phenomenon that explains our collective failure in engaging with climate change. To that end, we offer a set of actions at institutional, departmental, and individual level aimed at encouraging transition to net-zero carbon marketing logic in the classroom. With those contributions, our hope is to be part of the crucial and urgent transformation into a net-zero carbon society, through supporting progress towards a restoration economy, that is, an economy grounded in restorative rather than extractive development (Cunningham 2002).
This paper proceeds with a review of the literature relating to marketing curricula, considering the institutional and agentic forces influencing marketing education, and the gaps in knowledge relating to how faculty have responded to the imperatives of net-zero carbon. Next, we discuss our methods in detail, prior to presenting our findings, discussion, and conclusions for marketing education practice.
Marketing Education in the Twenty-first Century University
Marketing research and education occurs within the wider framework of higher education. Much has been written regarding the evolution of the traditional, liberal university towards the neoliberal, entrepreneurial university, and the negative impacts for students, faculty and wider society including alienation, precarity, grade inflation, instrumentalism, increased workload, and general erosion of the social contract (e.g., Dholakia, Ozgun, and Atik 2020; Gurrieri et al. 2022; Kilkauer and Young 2021). Wider digital transformation efforts and managerialism have pushed a greater administrative workload onto faculty and have at the same time created a class of academic administrators. Courses have migrated to learning management systems, and a more participative turn has transitioned pedagogy from traditional low engagement ‘sage on stage’ approaches to facilitation of high engagement, interactive learning experiences, again resulting in increased faculty workloads (Griffith and Altinay 2020; Tynan, Ryan, and Lamont-Mills 2015).
Along with a wider neoliberal turn towards ‘the customer’, top selling textbooks tell us that the marketing discipline has notionally evolved from the ‘marketing concept’ (e.g., one that focuses on knowing the needs and wants of target markets and delivering value and satisfaction better than competitors) to a ‘societal marketing concept’ (i.e., one that considers consumers’ wants, company requirements, consumer needs, and societal long run interests) (e.g., see top two selling US textbooks Kotler and Armstrong 2022; Lamb, Hair, and McDaniel 2022). However, the evidence suggests that the societal marketing concept remains subservient to individualism and competition, articulated in a small and repetitive set of ‘green’ marketing case studies (e.g., Patagonia), and firmly anchored in a ‘doing well by doing good’ proposition aligned with revenue growth logic (Cabrera and Williams 2014; Helm and Little 2022). In short, in the modern university, while an elite group of students may benefit from greater social capital and vocational skills emphasis, and industry may benefit from a more technocratically enhanced workforce, contribution to wider social good may be suffering (Easter, Ceulemans, and Lynn 2022; Kinol et al. 2023). Faculty are distracted with the increased workload, and students are reassured that ‘greening’ the current system is sufficient to ensure a flourishing society. The notion of societal marketing is under-developed, and presented uncritically as non-transformative incremental change. The ‘stickiness’ of traditional marketing curricula can therefore be explained by a context of marketization, demanding workloads, and increasingly precarious employment, exacerbated by the recent global pandemic. Lock-ins and path dependencies arising from these wider driving forces frame curriculum choices (Layton and Duffy 2018). The resulting systems rigidities constrain change to marketing education in general, and climate-related marketing education and research in particular (Little and Helm 2019). While it is not surprising that few colleagues challenge legacy design (Kemper, Ballantine, and Hall 2020), challenge it we must if marketers wish to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Going beyond anecdotal evidence, the current study therefore seeks to establish the extent of focus on the topics of sustainability and, specifically, climate change in contemporary marketing education, as well as to surface nuances in instructor perspectives, perceptions of barriers and facilitators and, ideally, to identify best practice examples.
In the wider higher education context, many universities and business schools, including those of the authors, have adopted the SDGs and PRME principles as driving logics. However, we observe that these wider organizational initiatives have largely failed to influence the marketing departments within them, which continue to promulgate the growth logics of the 1980s (Cabrera and Williams 2014). The tensions between espoused institutional values and marketing departmental practice can be understood as acts of decoupling and greenwashing.
Policy-practice decoupling occurs when organizations espouse policies, without substantive implementation (Conrad and Holtbrügge 2021; Schoeneborn and Trittin 2013). The well-known example is Volkswagen's emissions defeat device, whereby engineers worked towards disguising vehicle emissions levels, while the CEO espoused climate responsibility (Siano et al. 2017). We argue that promoting the SDGs and PRME on public facing communications platforms, and at the same time uncritically teaching twentieth century marketing ideas is the higher education equivalent. It is, in effect, ‘SDG-washing’ (Godelnik 2022). The lens of greenwashing can also be applied. Greenwashing occurs, either by accident or by design, when organizations invest more in communicating an environmentally responsible position than in actual environmental responsibility, engaging in obfuscation and misdirection (Lane 2016; Marquis, Toffel, and Zhou 2016; Siano et al. 2017). For example, Princeton has laudable and well-publicized carbon mitigation initiatives. However, less well publicized is BP's funding for research projects that undermine low carbon transition, and Exxon's employees with offices on campus, teaching classes along similar lines (Milman 2023b). Greenwashing creates a false sense of legitimacy. This can be equated to the Marxian idea of false consciousness, whereby social actors fail to recognize inequality, oppression, and exploitation owing to representations that disguise realities (Lee 1999; Santos 1999). Social actors cannot perceive the true nature of their social, environmental, and economic realities as the dominant discourse systematically (and in the above examples intentionally) conceals or obscures inequities, injustices, and (in the case of climate change), damage to the essential shared resources that sustain human life. The result is co-constructed agnosis, a form of culturally induced, strategic not-knowing captured in the aphorism ‘ignorance is bliss’.
Agnosis derives from history and linguistics (Croissant 2014; Gigerenzer and Garcia-Retamero 2017; Proctor and Schiebinger 2008) and should not be taken lightly: “(I)t is a mistake to underestimate the role of obtuseness in human affairs … the flight into stupidity is a flight away from responsibility” (James 2007, p. 685, 690). In other words, ignorance confers both practical and psychological advantage when it is deliberate, pervasive, and strategic, and when non-ignorance can result in discomfort or loss of resources. Ignorance hence has considerable functional, economic, and psychological value, obviating the need for change, and maintaining equilibrium through anchoring to an idealized past (Gigerenzer and Garcia-Retamero 2017). These ideas were exemplified in the dystopian movie ‘Don’t Look Up’ (McKay 2021). Humanity is faced with existential threat from a planet-killing comet and (spoiler alert) political and technocratic elites engage in distraction and deflection rather than meaningful response. The movie has clear parallels to current responses to catastrophic climate change. The title, ‘Don’t Look Up’, reflects agnosis i.e., maintaining a state of ontological security through ignorance. Art is a means of challenging current hegemonies, whereby knowledge asymmetries are maintained by elites including dictators, plutocrats, and (we must acknowledge) social scientists (Chomsky 2008; Proctor and Schiebinger 2008). Thirty years ago, Cohen (1990) pointed out that business school professors cannot teach what they do not know, explaining why some colleagues are slow to embrace the sustainability turn, and why environmentalism in business education originated from practitioners rather than faculty (Mintu and Lozada 1993). We must acknowledge that as a discipline, marketing is complicit in perpetuating the ‘ignorance contract’, else we would all be vigorously and programmatically challenging the damaging effects of overconsumption in our research and teaching.
With respect to individual responses to climate change, Terror Management Theory (TMT) provides the insight that humans establish defense mechanisms and socio-cultural structures to avoid thinking about their inevitable death (Becker 1973; Dickinson 2009; Greenberg, Solomon, and Pyszczynski 1997). Exposure to a death prime such as catastrophic climate change evokes two types of psychological defense mechanisms: proximal and distal. Proximal defenses refer to the cognitive process by which we remove death from focal thought, through strategies such as denial, suppression, or ridicule (Greenberg, Solomon, and Pyszczynski 1997). For example, in “Don’t Look Up” (McKay 2021) astrophysicist Dr Randall Mindy asks graduate student Kate: “This isn’t happening, right? Kate, this isn’t real, right? This is just some sort of alternate reality, right?”
While death thoughts can become subliminal once we have successfully denied, suppressed, or ridiculed that possibility, those thoughts continue to impact our subconscious, activating two forms of distal defenses. First, the strengthening of our cultural worldviews, “humanly created and transmitted beliefs about the nature of reality shared by groups of individuals” (Greenberg, Solomon, and Pyszczynski 1997, p. 65). In the movie, media pundits and business moguls emphasized the power of technology and desirability of maintaining profits. The second defense is bolstering self-esteem. With respect to climate change, Dickinson (2009, p. 5) noted that culturally sanctioned responses might be “counterintuitive increases in status-driven consumerism, materialism … and a tendency to bolster the existing worldview even if it is not sustainable”. For example, Dr Mindy opted to adopt a celebrity lifestyle rather than confront unpleasant realities (McKay 2021). In the ‘business as usual’ marketing classroom, legacy material offers the comfort and safety of tradition, providing additional explanation for why research and education practices have not embraced a more active role in transitioning to a net-zero carbon future. Additionally, those for whom career success (reputation, remuneration) relies on the current system are unlikely to engage in self or systems doubt. In short, the flight away from responsibility serves privileged elites well, which explains the collective reluctance to embrace the climate emergency.
While casual observation reflects little change in traditional micromarketing curricula, macromarketing education may offer some hope. Pedagogy was a highlight of the 2019 Cleveland macromarketing conference, featuring in conversations, conference tracks, and well-attended workshops (Shapiro et al. 2021). Sustainability-oriented education approaches also featured in a recent special issue of the Journal of Marketing Education, edited by macromarketers who argued strongly for overhauling what we teach (Kemper, Moscato, and Kennedy 2022). However, while innovating standalone or boutique courses is one thing (e.g., Brocato et al. 2022; Shapiro et al. 2021), innovating fundamentals courses is another. For example, we applaud the creative course design suggested by Watson et al. (2021) who incorporate both micro and macro perspectives in an ambitious weekly schedule of materials, activities, and visiting faculty. However, such a complex approach would be challenging for less experienced and less well-networked faculty to implement, and for busy students to engage with. ‘Regular’ students taking standard courses with the same traditional curriculum are less well served. The requirement is to implant change programmatically rather than idiosyncratically. We make these observations not as a critique, but to draw attention to the challenges of transforming current dominant logics.
Overall, the very idea of marketing is tied to (over)consumption and (limitless) growth (Klein 2019) yet is also complicit in creating catastrophic levels of GHG emissions that push our planet toward a climate tipping point (IPCC 2023). Observation and limited empirical evidence suggest this ‘inconvenient truth’ remains largely unrecognized by marketing stakeholders in higher education. However, the extent to which marketing faculty acknowledge and act on these particular realities is presently unknown. We proceed by describing a study designed to address that limitation.
Methods
We are seeking a broad understanding of global marketing education practice relating to climate change in the world's top universities. Therefore, we conducted an online survey of marketing academics, focusing on views of climate change and marketing education practice. We sampled every top 100 university, and every second other university from the list of business schools accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB 2022). We scraped email addresses for identifiable marketing faculty members (300 universities and 2876 email addresses total, average 10 per school, from 42 countries). 1 The survey was made available online from March to July 2022. We received n = 170 completed surveys which we boosted using a snowball sampling technique, sending the link to our academic networks and receiving an additional n = 30 responses for a total of 200 completed surveys. Responses were analyzed to assess significant differences between the random and snowball samples with respect to variables of interest (i.e., attitudes towards integration of climate change content into marketing courses). Chi-square and t-tests revealed no differences between the two samples with respect to these variables. Therefore, these samples were combined for further analysis.
The questionnaire was administered in English and contained four sections: Teaching experience, Teaching practice and climate change, Instructors’ views on climate change, and Socio-demographics. With respect to respondents’ status of integrating climate change (CC) into teaching practice, we developed a set of five items (e.g., “ I am planning to integrate more CC-related content into my marketing courses”), ten items on possible obstacles preventing teaching about climate change (e.g., “CC is too complex a topic to integrate into a marketing course”), and ten statements on the connections between marketing education, sustainability, and CC (e.g., “My students attach a lot of importance to matters related to CC”). The instrument was progressively fine-tuned based on feedback. Three expert judges evaluated the items and scales. Additionally, the revised instrument was pretested with ten colleagues from diverse language backgrounds for ease of comprehension and formulating a response (Collins 2003; Tourangeau 1984).
Sample Profile
In our sample of marketing educators, 47% and 34.5% identified as males and females respectively, the remainder identified as other genders (1%) or preferred not to say (17.5%). Over half of our sample (53.5%) were 45 years or older. Half resided in North America or Europe (50%), with the remainder in Asia/Pacific or unspecified. The majority of respondents held permanent positions (51.5%), with nearly half (47.5%) being Full or Associate Professors (Table 1).
Respondent Demographics.
Cluster Analysis
Subsequent to exploratory descriptive analysis of the sample composition, cluster analysis was used to investigate attitudes (perceptions of enablers and barriers) towards integration of climate change content into marketing courses. Previous research has used this technique effectively to describe subgroups of business and management scholars (Hwang et al. 2019) and marketing educators (Tregear et al. 2010). Eighteen scale items relating to perceptions of teaching climate change in marketing courses were used to generate a cluster analysis. Data were randomly divided into two subsets (e.g., Lockshin, Spawton, and Macintosh 1997; Michaelidou 2012). We used the first subset to generate possible hierarchical cluster analysis solutions with Ward's method (squared Euclidean distance). The dendrogram and agglomeration coefficients from the hierarchical cluster analysis suggested a two, three or four-cluster solution. We used the second data subset to conduct a k-means cluster analysis using two, three and four-cluster solutions. The initial centroids provided were used as cluster seeds in the k-means analysis (Hair et al. 2014; Punj and Stewart 1983). A hierarchical cluster analysis was also performed on the second subset of data (using Ward's method) and compared to the k-means analysis results from the same data file, in order to provide an indication of the stability of the solution (Punj and Stewart 1983). We adjudged the three-cluster solution to be the most stable and reproducible. The data sets were then combined, and a final k-means cluster analysis was conducted to ensure that the analysis exceeded minimum recommended sample size requirements (Qiu and Joe 2009) (Table 2).
Global Marketing Faculty – Three Cluster Solution.
Cluster centers based on overall scores where 1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree. 1 = Engaged, 2 = Conflicted, 3 = Traditionalist.
P = .000 for all measures except X16 (P=0.001).
Open-ended Responses
Eighteen percent of respondents (36) contributed brief comments to four optional, open-ended survey questions. While the responses were brief, and there was no opportunity to probe or expand, they provided greater insight into colleagues’ worlds. We followed an adapted version of Braun and Clarke's (2006) six phases of thematic analysis. First, all authors familiarized with the data by reading and re-reading the responses. Second, two authors individually applied open coding, with the aim of developing data-driven (rather than theory-driven) themes (Braun and Clarke 2006). One author used NVivo12, and the other used manual analysis in MS Excel. Third, each author individually ascribed interpretive categories and themes (Saldana 2012). Fourth, we presented our frameworks back to each other, identifying and discussing areas of agreement and disagreement until we arrived at a co-produced final coding scheme, including categories, sub-themes, themes, and relationships between themes. The full team of authors refined and ratified the themes (step 5), co-produced the analytic narrative, and subsequently refined and revised the narrative in response to the review process (step 6).
Findings
Results of Cluster Analysis
We identified three clusters of marketing faculty: Engaged (34%), Conflicted (49%) and Traditionalist (18%) (Table 2).
Comparatively, Cluster 1 (Engaged; 34%) have higher mean scores for all attributes relating to the integration of climate change into courses (X1–X8), and lower mean scores for barriers to integrating climate change into courses (X9–X15). Based on cluster center values, the Engaged are also less likely to highlight resource or motivational deficits, for example lack of industry priorities (X16), suitable teaching materials (X17), and time to add/change course content (X18) as a barrier to engaging with climate change.
Cluster 2 (Conflicted; 49%) have higher mean scores in relation to belief that climate change needs to be addressed in marketing courses (X1–X5). While the Conflicted score reasonably high on willingness to integrate climate change into courses (X8), they demonstrate lower average values in terms of having already thought about and/or integrated this content into their marketing courses (X6–X7). They have mid-level mean scores for most barriers to integrating climate change into courses (X9–X12, X14), and low mean scores on barriers of not wanting to add to students’ worry levels (X13) and considering the topic of climate change too controversial for marketing courses (X15). The Conflicted, on average, are most likely to believe that there is a lack of industry priority (X16), lack of suitable teaching materials (X17), and lack of time to add/change course content (X18) in relation to climate change.
Cluster 3 (Traditionalists; 18%) have lower mean scores for all attributes relating to the integration of climate change into courses (X1–X8), and higher mean scores for most barriers to integrating climate change into courses (X9–X12). The Traditionalists do however have lower mean scores in relation to not wanting to add to students’ worry levels (X13); and average mean scores for feeling that climate change is too controversial for marketing courses (X15) and considering themselves qualified to teach about climate change (X14). The Traditionalists, on average, are neutral in terms of their beliefs that there is a lack of industry priority (X16), lack of suitable teaching materials (X17), and lack of time to add/change course content (X18) in relation to climate change.
To establish the external validity of the cluster solution, criterion validity was assessed using variables omitted when developing clusters (Hair et al. 2014). The extent to which environmental sustainability features in the classes taught across an academic's teaching portfolio, and the extent to which environmental sustainability features in the projects across an academic's research portfolio were chosen to validate the cluster solution because these are the key criteria for evaluating climate consciousness in the sample. Cluster membership was cross-tabulated with these variables and chi-square tests of independence were conducted (Tables 3a and 3b). The Chi-square statistic is significant at the 5% level for both models (Teaching: χ2 = 49.859, P < .001; Research: χ2 = 46.288, P < .001), providing evidence these variables are not independent of cluster membership. Adjusted standardized residuals indicate that the Engaged are more likely, and the Conflicted and the Traditionalists are less likely, to integrate environmental sustainability in all classes taught across their teaching portfolio (Table 3a). The Traditionalists are also less likely to integrate environmental sustainability in most classes taught. Furthermore, adjusted standardized residuals (Table 3b) demonstrate that the Engaged are more likely to integrate environmental sustainability in all projects across their research portfolio. The Conflicted are more likely to integrate environmental sustainability in at least some research projects, while the Traditionalists are less likely to integrate environmental sustainability in any research projects at all.
(a) Integration of Environmental Sustainability in Classes Taught by Cluster.
Note: Sample size is lower than total sample size due to some missing responses on this variable.
For descriptive purposes, the clusters were further profiled on a set of additional variables not included in the clustering variate or used to assess criterion validity. Cross-tabulations and chi-square tests of independence revealed no difference between clusters in terms of gender and position (temporary/permanent/tenure). There was only weak evidence, at the 10% level (χ2 = 14.650, P=.066), of a relationship between cluster membership and age (Appendix A1). Specifically, there is evidence that the 55–64 year age group is overrepresented in the Engaged cluster and supporting Kemper, Ballantine, and Hall (2020), the 65+ age group appears overrepresented in the Traditionalist cluster. We also asked about the extent to which faculty consider marketing curricula should incorporate the topic of climate change (Appendix A2). A one-way ANOVA model and Tukey intervals revealed that the Engaged were most likely to agree that marketing curricula at business schools should incorporate the topic of climate change, followed by the Conflicted and finally the Traditionalists. In terms of personal beliefs about climate change, one-way ANOVA models and Tukey intervals demonstrate that the Traditionalists are less likely to perceive that global climate change will harm them personally or impact their community or country (Appendix A3). On average, the Engaged perceive the threat of climate change to be more immediate for themselves, their community, their country, and the world, while the Traditionalists perceive the threat of climate change to be more remote (Appendix A4). The Traditionalists are also less likely to agree that there is a need for climate change-related content in marketing curricula and that the wider business system is the cause of climate change (Appendix A5). Despite their relative lack of misgivings, the Traditionalists agree that their universities consider sustainability and climate change important, perhaps reflecting involvement in strategic university and faculty activities. The Engaged are more likely to consider that their university and students attach importance to matters of climate change (Appendix A5).
Open-ended Responses
Participant comments provided deeper insight, giving rise to three overarching themes, Felt need for change, Barriers to change and Actions taken (Appendix A6). The themes should be viewed with caution, as only 36 (18%) of respondents shared their thoughts, there was wide divergence in those thoughts, and we could not clarify or probe. Despite those limitations, the responses provide a sense of the global zeitgeist. To protect confidentiality in our small community, we have limited verbatim attributions to cluster membership, age range and four broad regions: (1) Australasia (all Asia, Australia, and New Zealand); (2) Europe; (3) North America; and (4) Other (Africa, the Middle East, and South America)) (Table 4).
Selected Verbatims by Cluster Membership (all Drawn from Random Sample).
All verbatims were drawn from the random, rather than snowball sample. The first theme, Felt need for change, we define as the general sense that society is failing to respond to a clear and present danger, that pro-social individuals and organizations (such as universities) should act in accordance with pro-social values, and that ethical choices directed at supporting human flourishing in the long term should be made: “Academics need to change …! We are role models so if we do not change who will?” [Europe, 55–64, Engaged]. This theme was replete with paradox and conflict. Verbatims reflected palpable frustration from the Engaged and Conflicted group with the pervasive, locked-in nature of current systems, with embedded geographic inequities (global north and south), with overconsumption as an unavoidable consequence of neoliberalism and modernity, and the need for meaningful change: “climate change and sustainability topics must be a fundamental in any marketing course. This is a part of the change in life … hence, shouldn’t be ignored!” [Other, 45–54, Engaged] “No marketing on a dead planet,” [Australasia, 55–64, Engaged]. The latter quote captures what is at stake, hence we include it in our title. The comments convey concerns with differences between espoused pro-social ethics and values and theory in use, and a sense of powerlessness relative to the destructive nature of the wider system. The general thrust was that ‘business as usual’ in marketing needed to evolve into a form that embraced sustainability logics, and that honored the notion of mutually beneficial value creation rather than a zero-sum game. Increasing pressures from external and internal sources to evolve marketing into new forms were felt to derive from changing stakeholder expectations of business schools (including society, faculty, and students), and growing forces for change.
The second theme was Barriers to change, which we define as macro, meso, and micro level anti-restoration mechanisms including, for example, ideologies and growth logics, institutional managerialism, student sensitivities, knowledge deficits, and competing demands for curriculum space and faculty time. Ideologies were felt to be problematic: “[We need to teach students] how to question the dominant narrative … I don’t feel I am allowed to provide an alternate view … so I end up teaching nothing about this topic” [Australasia, 55–64, Traditionalist]. “There is no willingness to criticise an overall economic system that demands growth, privileges profit above all other forms of value” [Australasia, 45–54, Conflicted]. With respect to curriculum resources, many used standard textbooks without complaint. However, some found these obsolete or limited, preferring more specialized texts (e.g., Belz and Peattie's (2009) Sustainability Marketing). In general, the data reflected competing demands on faculty time, energy, and attention (Table 4, Appendix A6). There were reports of deficits around expertise, skills, confidence, teaching materials, and knowledge, particularly with respect to the complexity of systems and the intersectional character of wicked problems such as climate change.
The third theme is Action to take
Overall, the open-ended responses reflected diverse practices and opinions, as we would expect from our colleagues, albeit derived from a small subset of faculty worldwide. While we cannot claim they are representative of all marketing faculty, we would argue for face validity, as the comments reflect many conversations in many corridors and at many conferences over many years. The results suggest colleagues are sensitive to marketing's positionality within a dynamic social context, and the need for disciplinary response regardless of attitude towards the issue of climate change. Taken in combination with the cluster analysis, they provide a benchmark for tracking progress towards disciplinary transformation.
Discussion
In a context of climate emergency, our goal was to identify the extent to which marketing colleagues appreciate the need for change, and to ascertain how that plays out in current research and education practice. We further argued that the notion of agnosis might explain the current state of climate-consciousness in marketing higher education. We structure our subsequent discussion around these three topics, and offer a new conceptualization of the interaction between agnosis and engagement, as mechanisms for promoting (or preventing) transition to a restoration economy.
Appreciation of the Need for Change
With regard to our first research question, whether marketing educators perceive a need for change, we were heartened that more than a third of our sample (the Engaged) are actively integrating sustainability and climate change concerns into their research and teaching practice. Additionally, nearly half (the Conflicted) are reluctant rather than resistant. They are aware of needed change and predisposed to adapt their teaching, however are not sure how to do so. Thus, the majority of marketing academics are either active or potential supporters of change. Less than a fifth of our sample belong to the final group (the Traditionalists). Of those, a quarter are aged 65+, reaching the end of their careers, and also likely to hold positions of power and influence. While detailed data on our study population of marketing educators are not available, studies in the general (US) population indicate support that Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) are less likely to have taken action to help address climate change or see it as a top personal concern compared to subsequent generations (Pew Research Center 2021; Swim et al. 2022). We cannot wait them out; to avoid worst-case climate scenarios we must reduce the level of greenhouse gas emission reductions during this decade (IPCC 2023). Therefore, we must make a concerted effort to ‘manage up’ within our departments and faculties (we thank an anonymous reviewer for making this observation). Our findings gave us cause for hope that with some leadership and resource support, marketing education can facilitate rather than impede business and systems change toward a net-zero carbon, restoration economy, timely.
One issue that we want to highlight is that increasing awareness of climate change can lead to climate anxiety, worry, distress, and grief (Clayton 2020; Parry et al. 2019). Angst is a reasonable and appropriate response to existential threat, however, rising eco- and climate anxiety among students (and faculty!) are serious considerations when promoting CC-related content integration in marketing curricula. Therefore, we were troubled to find that all three clusters were relatively unconcerned about adding to students’ anxieties. As w e do not wish to further compound youth anxiety and the current mental health crisis (Kruisselbrink Flatt 2013), we argue that in order to effectively address climate change in the classroom, particularly with younger cohorts of students, how we teach about climate change is as important as what we teach. From a mental health perspective, existential threats must be introduced to pedagogy gently (Armstrong, Krasny, and Schuldt 2018; Helm et al. 2018; Kruisselbrink Flatt 2013).
Guidance is available. Armstrong, Krasny, and Schuldt (2018) for example give advice about how to present the basics of climate science and climate change public opinion, synthesize research from climate change communication, and give examples for education applications. Beach, Share, and Webb (2017) focus on how to teach about climate change to an adolescent audience, providing guidance for developing curriculum and engaging assignments. Siperstein, Hall, and LeMenager (2017) provide an edited reader on how to teach climate change, including ideas for instructors teaching courses not focused on CC as well as archives for teaching and learning about CC. Finally, Hayhoe (2021) and associates offer YouTube videos on climate hope. None of these resources are authored by, or directed at, marketing educators which is perhaps not surprising. However, the potential for invigorating our efforts in the classroom is exciting.
As a final point, in proposing a restoration economy, we argue caution is required, commensurate with the risk entailed in changing the established order of things. The tensions between continuity and change are well documented (Langley 2023). Enlisting students and faculty in relinquishing growth-oriented marketing logic, challenging the status quo of our comforting consumer culture, and embracing significant and potentially arduous behavioral change as part of restorative development present non-trivial psychological and pedagogical challenges. We discuss how we might approach this very challenging agenda, next.
Addressing Climate Change in the Marketing Classroom
Our second research question, about how marketing educators are actually addressing climate change, elicited a wide variety of approaches. Responses ranged from those who were doing nothing, to those who were actively pivoting their research and innovating curriculum and pedagogy. Of the 18% who commented in greater depth, Engaged colleagues shared what read to us as best practice, while Conflicted colleagues felt the topic was too diffuse, too technically demanding, or ideologically problematic. There was evidence of deep reflection, and apprehension about ‘doing the right thing’, suggesting that those currently integrating CC- and sustainability content into their marketing courses may be more motivated by personal rather than professional reasons (see also Kemper, Ballantine, and Hall 2020). Supporting this argument, participants were less supportive of ‘top-down’ (managerial) approaches to sustainability, an approach which Kemper, Ballantine, and Hall (2019) similarly found to be less effective.
Overall, the responses reflect the diversity of marketing faculty worldwide – experienced and inexperienced, Engaged, Conflicted and Traditionalists. At all levels, macro (societal), meso (university), and micro (individual), more active, intentional effort is needed. While there are pockets of excellence in marketing education practice with respect to climate change, we need to systematically ensure that marketing educators are part of the solution rather than a part of the problem.
Agnosis in the Marketing Education System
The idea of climate change is frightening. Therefore, agnosis, or strategic ignorance, might explain why social stakeholders fail to engage. While we can only speculate, the relatively low response rate to this survey suggests that agnosis is at work, similar to studies investigating related topics among academic respondents (e.g., Lozano et al. 2015). Deleting a troubling message causes less anxiety than engaging with it. Building on the idea of agnosis and engagement as opposing forces, we propose a new conceptualization, explaining how agnosis and engagement affect propensity to change marketing education practice to more restorative forms (Figure 1).
The interplay of agnosis and engagement in marketing theory and practice.
Macro, meso and micro level factors at societal, university and individual levels co-constitute agnosis, which in turn influences dominant discourses, which in turn influence propensity to change. All are co-constitutive: That is, each mutually reinforce each other in a co-creative relationship. At macro level, in the wider social landscape, cognitive-cultural factors including the dominant (neoliberal) discourse of economic growth, individualism, and marketization creates a false consciousness, privileging the material and the financial over the social and the community, while growing wealth inequality damages social cohesion. While at this point universities maintain their social license to operate (Demuijnck and Fasterling 2016), we can imagine future challenges to legitimacy should the value proposition of tertiary study erode beyond a point of tolerance for societal and student stakeholder groups At meso level, dominant discourses are reinforced by university practices uncritical of the status quo, and by decoupling activities including greenwashing and SDG-washing. At micro level, instrumentalism and careerism on the part of faculty could be framed both as distal and proximal defenses, and a logical response to increasing workloads and employment precarity. Both compromise engagement. Agnosis-driven discourses are negatively valenced with respect to propensity to transition to more restorative forms of practice. Agnosis both contributes to and is an outcome of the anti-restoration mechanisms at all three levels and represents a potent reinforcer of the status quo and continuity.
Engagement, on the other hand, offers a countervailing and positively valenced force vs agnosis. While the same macro discourses prevail, at meso level, adopting PRME and the UN SDGs as guiding values provide positive pressures for change, as several study participants remarked. As Meadows (2006) points out, system values are one of the strongest leverage points in a system. At micro level, individual faculty values and priorities are not only affected by institutional pressures, but also by growing concern about the state of our natural and social environment, and the future for our students and our children. Future generations of marketing educators may feel even more strongly motivated to change, to adapt teaching practice towards a more prosocial curriculum, and to embark on more profound critique of the dominant paradigm in our discipline. Increased faculty engagement is a necessary condition if we are to transition to a restoration economy.
Limitations and Implications for Research and Practice
This study had the ambitious goal of surveying marketing educators worldwide. To avoid dominance of Western perspectives (Wooliscroft and Ko 2021), the data reflects the views of colleagues in 42 countries. However, the design has several limitations. First, non-English speakers were excluded, which may have resulted in limited response from non-English speaking countries or where English is not spoken as a second language. An unsolicited online survey is also problematic. Marketing faculty are under workload pressure (Griffith and Altinay 2020; Tynan, Ryan, and Lamont-Mills 2015), and email recruitment in a work environment is further hampered by spam filters. Thus, a low response rate is not surprising. Nonresponse and our snowball sampling approach may have resulted in some response bias. If this is so, then the results likely overstate educator concerns about climate change. As previously noted, we also speculate that the subject matter might be off-putting. Low response rates may be an indicator of agnosis at work, as answering questions about how we actively and professionally address an existential threat (or fail to do so) is confronting.
Future research might therefore adopt different recruitment strategies to address sampling issues, for example, enlisting the support of industry organizations such as the AACSB or AMA (American Marketing Association), which might improve response rates. However, care must be taken not to focus on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) marketing educators alone. Second, as one respondent noted, the term ‘overconsumption’ is in common usage, yet we lack proper operationalization or conceptualization. Work towards defining and appropriately conceptualizing overconsumption would be helpful, perhaps through a systematic literature review, with regard to linkages to climate change and wider sustainability issues. Third, this study was a snapshot. Deeper insight into the proximate and distal defenses hampering disciplinary change is needed, indicating naturalistic enquiry approaches, for example depth interviews, focus group discussions, and participatory action research. These approaches could probe understandings of agnosis and engagement more deeply and discover hidden linkages between mindset and practices. Finally, as one participant pointed out, secondhand reporting on students’ opinions and attitude is problematic, we need firsthand insight and to enlist students in addressing the grand challenge of climate change. In general, more support for marketing stakeholders motivated to transition to a restoration economy is essential, as are studies linking marketing, degrowth, and restorative development. Research on degrowth in other disciplines could guide such research projects (e.g., Johanisova, Crabtree, and Fraňková 2013; Kallis, Kerschner, and Martinez-Alier 2012).
Despite its limitations, our study provides some sobering evidence relating to wider marketing education and research practice. Marketing educators influence future business leaders’ marketing worldviews, and their actions. We must accept our own collective complicity in promulgating growth logics supporting overconsumption and, in turn, climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and resource depletion. Therefore, changes in teaching and research activities are urgent and long overdue. To support transition to climate change-conscious teaching in marketing, building on our study findings, we propose a range of individual, disciplinary, and institutional actions designed to assist colleagues in transitioning from Conflicted to Engaged, and in challenging the Traditionalists (Table 5). In support of this agenda for change, we coin the term ‘macrodemic’ marketing, which we define as purposive macrosocial marketing strategies and practices directed at changing attitudes and behaviors of higher education actors at micro (individual marketing educators), and meso levels (marketing departments, business schools, and universities) in support of transition towards a restoration economy.
Transitioning Marketing Education Practice into Restorative Forms.
Conclusion
Since the authors started thinking seriously about the linkages between marketing education and the climate emergency over five years ago, both global temperatures and media reportage have heated up rapidly e.g., “‘We are damned fools’: Scientist who sounded climate alarm in 80s warns of worse to come” (Milman 2023c). The headline captures the magnitude and urgency of necessary change, the complex linkages in physical, social, and economic systems we highlight in this research, and the difficulties in communicating those linkages to audiences who do not wish to know (Figure 1). Regardless, there is hope. Marketing is a powerful societal institution, offering a body of knowledge that places us well to support necessary change (Radford, Hunt, and Andrus 2015). Sheth and Parvatiyar (2021) call on marketers to drive rather than be driven by markets, offering a set of actions for sustainable marketing directed at industry and policy. This research extends that work by contributing insight into climate-related higher education practice, and recommended actions (Table 5) for individual and organizational higher education stakeholders in pursuit of restorative development.
We call on colleagues to urgently and energetically engage, to adopt these strategies, and to pivot teaching and research practice to embrace (preferably) or at the very least not impede transition to a restoration economy.
In service of change, this research provides a sense of where we are now as a discipline, and greater insight into the extent to which global marketing faculty are championing the urgent need for economic and societal transformation. We therefore provide a benchmark for future calibration of these important efforts. It was gratifying to find that many colleagues are resisting the current disciplinary zeitgeist of overconsumption and growth, by proactively incorporating sustainability content into their teaching and research. The majority of our participants are receptive to necessary change (Engaged, Conflicted clusters). Some actively supported necessary transition (Engaged), others would do more if they were supported in doing so (Conflicted). The least engaged cluster (Traditionalists) were not unaware of climate-related issues, either giving it lip service, or focusing on more immediate issues such as pollution, genetic modification, and geopolitics.
We hope that our study and suggested resources provide a springboard to action. After all, marketing educators are uniquely positioned as vanguards for change (Little and Helm 2019). We are thought leaders in classrooms and in wider society, and with that role comes both power and responsibility. Individually and collectively, we can shape necessary actions through creating and maintaining a disciplinary discourse conducive to transition towards a net-zero carbon, restoration economy.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-jmk-10.1177_02761467231211302 - Supplemental material for “No Marketing on a Dead Planet”: Rethinking Marketing Education to Support a Restoration Economy
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-jmk-10.1177_02761467231211302 for “No Marketing on a Dead Planet”: Rethinking Marketing Education to Support a Restoration Economy by Sabrina V. Helm, Vicki J. Little and Catherine Frethey-Bentham in Journal of Macromarketing
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
Our grateful thanks to our colleagues who took the time to respond to our online survey and who generously shared their thoughts. We also owe a debt of gratitude to Vy and An who diligently scraped nearly three thousand faculty email addresses from all manner of university websites. It was a tedious job, but it had to be done. We could not have done this without you. We also warmly thank the anonymous reviewers and the Associate Editor for their constructive feedback. You helped us see the wood for the trees and made the paper much stronger than it would otherwise have been.
Associate Editor
Julie Stanton.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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