Management Learning and Normative Marketing Theory: Learning from the Life-World

This speculative paper attempts to critically examine the theoretical coherence of managerialist marketing management education from a management learning perspective. The coherence in question concerns a perceived tendency for marketing models and maxims to refer to positive epistemologies in support of normative conclusions. The paper tries to address some of the contradictions which seem to arise when marketing is conceived as (a) a body of academic knowledge with a social scientific tradition, (b) a popular form of normative management education which is learned by managers and learned and taught by academics, and (c) an organizational function which exists in many forms in the life-world and has its own discursive, grammatical and linguistic structures which frame experience in distinctive local ways which are `taken for granted'. The discussion seeks a reflexive reconciliation between marketing's normative metaphors (market `orientation', segmentation, positioning, targeting and so on) and the apparent epistemological contradictions entailed in using them as a basis for learning marketing management. The conclusion tries to sketch out a theory of managerial marketing learning as a creative process of personal and organizational change which can acquire a quality of reflexivity through an appreciation of marketing management knowledge as a culturally and historically located product.