Per Skalen – författare

The marketing discipline has been dominated by managerial research that has never really been counterbalanced by a systematic critical analysis which is problematic given the assumed legitimization of the managerialism that has ensued. This book is an attempt to rest the balance, articulating a social critique and evaluation of marketing.

The book offers a critical survey of the most important contributions to managerial marketing discourse from the earliest twentieth century onwards, covering traditions of research such as scientific selling, marketing management and service marketing and drawing from Michel Foucault’s understanding of power and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Discourse Theory. The analysis reveals that managerial marketing discourse has promoted a government of organizations that is centred around the customer and that the shifts and turning points in this rationality through time signify more fundamental shifts in emphasis in the type of power promoted by marketing discourse and the subject positions is ascribes to people.

The marketing discipline has been dominated by managerial research that has never really been counterbalanced by a systematic critical analysis which is problematic given the assumed legitimization of the managerialism that has ensued. This book is an attempt to rest the balance, articulating a social critique and evaluation of marketing.

The book offers a critical survey of the most important contributions to managerial marketing discourse from the earliest twentieth century onwards, covering traditions of research such as scientific selling, marketing management and service marketing and drawing from Michel Foucault’s understanding of power and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Discourse Theory. The analysis reveals that managerial marketing discourse has promoted a government of organizations that is centred around the customer and that the shifts and turning points in this rationality through time signify more fundamental shifts in emphasis in the type of power promoted by marketing discourse and the subject positions is ascribes to people.

Based on a conceptual analysis of marketing texts, particularly service marketing texts, and a case study of a service firm that utilizes approaches to managing organizations that have been developed within the boundaries of marketing, this book presents a critical examination of marketing as a managerial practice. Skålén focuses in particular on the managerial research tradition and managerial practice referred to as service marketing (sometimes service management), which is seen as a ‘dominant managerial logic’ by many marketing scholars.

Skålén analyzes the governmentality of service marketing through textual representations of managerial marketing and a case study of a service organization. Based on the former, the author argues that managerial marketing has always promoted and fostered customer orientation as the main governmental rationality and that this rationality in service marketing targets human beings more exclusively than previously. This book contributes to critical marketing research since this research tradition lacks studies of empirical responses to managerial marketing which articulate a radical social critique.