INTEREST CATEGORY: INTERORGANIZATIONAL
POSTING TYPE: Calls: Journals

Author: Maja Arslanagić-Kalajdžić

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Call for Papers

INDUSTRIAL MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Organisational agility for new industrial marketing management models in turbulent times

Deadline for submission: November 1^st 2023

Overview and purpose of the special issue

Companies are constantly expected to address complex and critical changes that have a direct impact on the way they deliver services and products and require effective solutions and innovative thinking (Ameen, Cheah & Kumar, 2022; Osburg, Yoganathan, Kunz & Tarba, 2022). Examples of these changes are the COVID-19 global pandemic which caused major interlinked economic, social and environmental changes (Field et al., 2021). Meanwhile, cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning have a significant impact on the customer journey (Ameen, Hosany & Tarhini, 2021; Ameen, Sharma, Tarba, Rao & Chopra, 2022). These changes are associated with the ever-changing stakeholders’ needs and preferences. Within such a complex environment, developing organisational capabilities in terms of agility, flexibility and resilience is key for success.

Agility refers to sensing and responding to new situations in a timely fashion, reducing complexity, and potentially opportunities for designing ecosystems (Field et al., 2021). The terms agility and flexibility primarily relate to the ability of a pair of partners to integrate and reconfigure resources to respond and adjust to environmental shifts (Christof, Pereira, Vrontis, Tarba & Thrassou, 2021). Particularly, agility has proved to be significant within the context of industrial business to business (B2B) and international business, for example, social media agility (Chuang, 2020), marketing agility and financial performance (Zhou, Mavondo & Saunders, 2019), network agility and firm’s agility and how it is influenced by information systems (Chen & Chiang, 2011) and agile supply chain management (Centobelli, Cerchione & Ertz, 2020). In addition, agility has been identified as one of the key requirements for improving key issues such as diversity, equality, and inclusion in organisations to ensure creating and maintaining an environment that is welcoming and supportive for all employees. There are many ways in which the values and principles of agility overlap with concepts of diversity, equality, and inclusion. For example, one of the core principles of the agile movement is to value individuals and their interactions over processes and tools.

Scholarly interest in agility and flexibility has been rising continuously (Christof et al., 2021; Harsch & Festing, 2020). However, how firms in B2B contexts can develop agility, flexibility and resilience in a complex ecosystem has not been fully investigated yet. Although previous studies have included organisational agility, these were mainly focused on markets, supply chains and corporate sustainability and IT operations, there is a lack of research on firm’s (particularly B2B firms) agility during turbulent times. Existing research highlights the complexity of the ecosystems of international marketing and interfirm relationships in B2B contexts (e.g. Behl, Jayawardena, Pereira, Tarba & Bamel, 2022; Kaufmann, Czinkota & Zakrzewski, 2015; Pattinson, Nicholson & Lindgreen, 2018).

Sample Topics

Given the recency of the field and the need for contemporary and high-quality research in this area, the current special issue invites conceptual and empirical contributions employing qualitative, quantitative, experimental approaches, or mixed methods designs. We also encourage collaborations between academics and the industry. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Identifying and addressing the challenges associated with B2B marketing firms’ agility, flexibility and resilience; and the integration of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality in new B2B models during times of uncertainty

• Exploring how different generations of managers in B2B marketing firms (such as Generation Z and Millennials) respond to various challenges in turbulent times
• Understanding the key organisational capabilities in the B2B marketing context, in terms of agility, flexibility and resilience required to create new B2B models in complex ecosystems

• Identifying new ways of developing extreme flexibility in resource configurations and ecosystems to develop new B2B models
• Exploring new ways in which agility and flexibility can improve diversity, equality, and inclusion in B2B firms, for example, closing the gender gap among frontline employees and employees from marginalised groups and ethnic minorities

• Designing sustainable B2B ecosystems to tackle complex problems identified by the United Nations Development Programme and in line with their sustainability goals
• Exploring how firms offering B2B services and products should be redesigned to enhance agility and flexibility to manifest within complex marketing ecosystems during turbulent times
• Exploring the key barriers and obstacles to developing and designing B2B organisations agility, flexibility and resilience to respond to expected and unexpected global challenges
• Investigating various stakeholders needs and how agility and flexibility can help in addressing these needs, for example, to meet the B2B firms needs of different generations and demographics of clients

For enquiries regarding this call, please contact one of the guest editors.

Preparation and submission of paper and review process

Papers submitted must not have been published, accepted for publication, or presently be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submissions should be about 6,000-8,000 words in length. Copies should be uploaded on Industrial Marketing Management’s homepage through the Editorial management system. You need to upload your paper using the dropdown box for the special issue on VSI: Turbulent Times. For guidelines, visit:

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505720/authorinstructions.

Papers not complying with the notes for contributors (cf. homepage) or poorly written will be desk rejected. Suitable papers will be subjected to a double-blind review; hence, authors must not identify themselves in the body of their paper. Manuscripts within the scope of the special issue (as described above) and deemed to have a reasonable chance of conditional acceptance after no more than two rounds of revisions will enter the review process.

Important dates

• Submission opens: September 1, 2023
• Deadline for submission: November 1, 2023

Guest editors

• Nisreen Ameen (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK; ameen@rhul.ac.uk)
• Shlomo Tarba (University of Birmingham, UK; tarba@bham.ac.uk)

References

Ameen, N., Cheah, J.H. & Kumar, S. (2022). It’s all part of the customer journey: The impact of augmented reality, chatbots, and social media on the body image and self‐esteem of Generation Z female consumers. Psychology & Marketing. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21715.

Ameen, N., Hosany, S., & Tarhini, A. (2021). Consumer interaction with cutting-edge technologies: Implications for future research. Computers in Human Behavior, 120, 106761. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.106761

Ameen, N., Sharma, G.D., Tarba, S., Rao, A. & Chopra, R. (2022). Toward advancing theory on creativity in marketing and artificial intelligence. Psychology & Marketing. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21699.

Behl, A., Jayawardena, N., Pereira, V., Tarba, S., & Bamel, U. (2022). The role played by relational turbulence in managing agency problems among value chain partners in the sharing economy: A review of the antecedents, benefits, risks, and boundary conditions. Industrial Marketing Management, 107, 39-51.

Centobelli, P., Cerchione, R. & Ertz, M., (2020). Agile supply chain management: where did it come from and where will it go in the era of digital transformation? Industrial Marketing Management, 90, 324-345.

Chen, W.H. & Chiang, A.H., (2011). Network agility as a trigger for enhancing firm performance: A case study of a high-tech firm implementing the mixed channel strategy. Industrial Marketing Management, 40(4), 643-651.

Christofi, M., Pereira, V., Vrontis, D., Tarba, S. & Thrassou, A., (2021). Agility and flexibility in international business research: A comprehensive review and future research directions. Journal of World Business, 56(3), 101194.

Chuang, S.H., (2020). Co-creating social media agility to build strong customer-firm relationships. Industrial Marketing Management, 84, 202-211.

Field, J.M., Fotheringham, D., Subramony, M., Gustafsson, A., Ostrom, A.L., Lemon, K.N., Huang, M.H. & McColl-Kennedy, J.R., (2021). Service Research Priorities: Designing Sustainable Service Ecosystems. Journal of Service Research, https://doi.org/10.1177/10946705211031302.

Kaufmann, H.R., Czinkota, M.R. & Zakrzewski, M., (2015). B2B and internal relationships and curative international marketing: A polish case study. Industrial Marketing Management, 51, 69-78.

Osburg, V. S., Yoganathan, V., Kunz, W. H., & Tarba, S. (2022). Can (A) I Give You a Ride? Development and Validation of the CRUISE Framework for Autonomous Vehicle Services. Journal of Service Research, 10946705221118233.

Pattinson, S., Nicholson, J. & Lindgreen, A., (2018). Emergent coopetition from a sensemaking perspective: A multi-level analysis. Industrial Marketing Management, 68, 25-35.

Zhou, J., Mavondo, F.T. & Saunders, S.G., (2019). The relationship between marketing agility and financial performance under different levels of market turbulence. Industrial Marketing Management, 83, 31-41.