Denial at the top table: status attributions and implications for marketing

Senior marketing management is seldom represented on the Board of Directors nowadays, reflecting a deteriorating status of the marketing profession. We examine some of the key reasons for marketing’s demise, and discuss how the status of marketing may be restored by demonstrating the value of marketing to the business community. We attribute marketing’s demise to several related key factors: narrow typecasting, marginalisation and limited involvement in product development, questionable marketing curricula, insensitivity toward environmental change, questionable professional standards and roles, and marketing’s apparent lack of accountability to CEOs. Each of these leads to failure to communicate, create, or deliver value within marketing. We argue that a continued inability to deal with marketing’s crisis of representation will further erode the status of the discipline both academically and professionally

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Rethinking the Emergence of Relationship Marketing

In this article, the history of relationship marketing (RM) is challenged. Similar to discussions of the marketing concept, the debates surrounding RM are largely ahistorical. This is despite numerous scholars indicating that RM has a far longer history than is currently appreciated. In contrast to received wisdom that RM emerged in the late 1970s, it is demonstrated that RM themes have been present in the marketing literature for longer than is recognized by the contemporary scholars