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The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue that critically examines topics informing long‐standing disputes concering the status of theory and practice in management studies. Contributions explore the character of the imputed relationship between theory and practice.

The editorial introduction sets the discussion of topics in the context of institutional change influencing the production, circulation and consumption of knowledge products in the economy of relevance and reputation. It also presents an overview of the papers included in the special issue.

The main themes addressed in the papers represent a call for change; a call to radicalize the approaches to understanding ways of knowing; a call to re‐evaluate relations with practitioners; and a call to reimagine ways of representing knowledge to various constituencies, including fellow academic practitioners, management practitioners, students, and policy‐makers and other opinion‐formers.

The key message is one of the importance of encouraging broad discussions concerning the direction and impact of flows of knowledge and the various products in which that knowledge is embedded. It calls for a more market‐oriented approach to understanding the knowledge economy and the mediating role of various institutional players, including the academy, in the circulation, creation and destruction of knowledge products.

That a more‐market oriented approach to arrangements for the distribution of research resources in management studies calls for the development of more market‐oriented institutions capable of shaping relationships of collaboration, involvement and accountability.

Contributions expand the understanding of the problems and opportunities of imputing links to theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore social dynamics around food and clothing provisioning for young families and how involvement in environmental concerns shapes those dynamics and presents challenges and opportunities to in terms of evolving consumer tastes. Through collecting and analysing narratives of mothering, the authors explore the influence of children on decision making in household provisioning; in particular, how their education into sustainable concepts through the European initiative of eco-schools impacts provisioning.

The exploratory research design specifically sought the demographic profile identified in extant literature as engaging with sustainability issues to explore how they were interpreted into familial consumption. This resulted in 28 unstructured interviews exploring a range of related topics with a group of highly educated working mothers with a profession.

The study finds that family consumption behaviour is mediated by relations towards environmental concerns and taste positions taken by both parents and children. It illustrates how care for children’s safety, social resilience and health and well-being is habitus informed as well as being the subject of wider institutional logics including educational interventions such as school eco-status and participation in mother and child activity groups. However, tensions arose surrounding the children’s socialisation with peers and space was provided to help the children self-actualise.

The exploratory goal of the study limited the scope of its empirical work to a small group of participants sharing consumer characteristics and geographical location.

The research provides ideas for retailers, brands and marketers to better position their product offering as it relates to growing family concerns for ecological issues and sustainable consumption, as well as what motivates sustainable behaviours, from both the child and mothers perspective.

The research identifies the immersion of sustainability into family households when there are no financial implications, influenced through campaigns, schools and society. This provides examples of what motivates sustainable behaviours for retailers and marketers to develop strategies that can be capitalised on.

The originality of the research emerges through examining how children influence sustainability within households and decision making, moving beyond health implications to educate children to be responsible consumers through play and authentic experiences.

Mistah Kotler ‐ he dead.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/EUM0000000001875. When citing the article, please cite: Robert Paton, Douglas Brownlie, (1991), “STRATEGY FORMULATION IN SMALL ENTERPRISES: A DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH”, European Business Review, Vol. 91 Iss: 2.

This paper is about marketing accounting. It is about reading marketing writing and writing marketing reading and what calls them into being. It is about our “ab‐outing” practices; those signifying practices by means of which we week to capture a piece of the world and show it off, wrapped in a suitable tale of discovery, in a cabinet in the museum of marketing knowledge. You may wonder why should we bother, since without those representation practices and textual conventions how could we be sure that the objects on display were real, not fakes; that our representations were true images of objects in the real world, not mere simulations of simulations? Do you find comfort in the view that marketing discourse organizes in such a way as to sustain the convention that objects in the marketing world “out there” are antecedent to our images of them? And does it discomfort you to recognize the ideas of Garfinkel (1967) being used to suggest that marketing accounts are constituent features of the settings we make observable? Whatever your answers, how textual organization persuades and makes real is a point worth considering. I think this is a timely project, as we warm to qualitative methods, especially ethnography, on the (mis)understanding that they can reveal truer, deeper, thicker insights into the real world. For it is not possible to avoid the problem of representation in this way, as Geertz (1973) reminds us in his invitation to reflexive ethnographic inquiry.

A simple but effective approach to the analysis of market opportunities is outlined. It is argued that for small enterprises the link between business development and management development is clear and direct: the consequence being that useful techniques have to be explored and discovered in a partnership with managers, not prescribed on the basis of what other larger firms might do. A process is described that has been tested with the managers of numerous small enterprises as they struggled to come to terms with the implications for their business of the liberalisation of the European market in 1992.

A day rarely passes without there being discussion of the major changes which organizations in both the public and private sectors, are undergoing to become more effective. The case for change is often said to be driven by the imperatives of an increasingly demanding marketplace; and this case is often expressed in a seductive rhetoric which utilizes maxims and metaphors drawn from the ideological resource of the marketing concept. The authors believe that the current penchant for couching change initiatives in the language of marketing exposes some of the limitations of the marketing concept. Discusses these limitations and addresses the problems which constrain the use of the marketing concept as an ideological resource.

The rapid technological change of recent years has played a major role in changing the structure of established industries as well as creating new industries. It has elevated the management of technology into the arena of strategic issues. This paper reviews the work of authors who argue that technology management must be given a strategic role in the firm. It does not take issue with the general tenor of their views; but, it counsels caution on the grounds that a focus on technology supply may lead to a product orientation which subverts the influence of customer considerations in strategy making. The author argues for an approach to the strategic management of technology that integrates the technology supply and technology demand perspectives. Descriptive guidelines are developed for an integrative framework by means of which technology strategy can be formulated.

The nature and direction of the satisfactions that are delivered to consumers of bank services are explored, and the criteria used to evaluate these services are highlighted. The non‐metric multidimensional scaling technique enabled respondents′ perceptions to be represented spatially. It is revealed that respondents had high levels of satisfaction with regard to the location and accessibility of branches and ATMs, and acceptance of the current levels of banking fees; but expressed some caution in their evaluation of new and improved services.

An emerging gap in the coverage of marketing management texts is examined — the protection of marketing intelligence. The contribution that trademark agents can make to the success of marketing strategy by virtue of the advice they can offer on the protection of marketing intelligence is looked at, and several trends in the marketing environment are identified that may lead the issue of protecting all forms of marketing intelligence into the strategic arena.