The Rhetoric of Emerging Systems

Systems thinking has been a component in Vargo and Lusch’s work since its inception, stretching back even to the paper Lusch co-authored in the early 1990s that we examined in chapter 4 (Kiel et al., Toward a New Paradigm for Marketing: The Evolutionary Exchange Paradigm. Behavioral Science, 37(1), 59–76, 1992). However, the extent to which the systems perspective has moved towards the centre of S-D logic has certainly increased over the past fifteen years. Consequently, this chapter analyses the way in which systems thinking (that is, perspectives on the market as a system that are influenced by General Systems Theory, first- and second-order cybernetics, and the broader ‘systems thinking’ movement) has been used rhetorically in the development of S-D logic. After a quite promising start in the work of Fisk (Marketing Systems: An Introductory Analysis. Harper International, 1967), systems approaches have had a patchy reception and uptake by marketing scholars, most recently finding a sympathetic home in the sub-field of macromarketing. This chapter looks at the rhetorical tensions behind the systems concept in marketing and wider business and management studies and asks what persuasive (as well as conceptual) advantage does its adoption bring to S-D logic? The chapter finishes with a consideration of the rhetoric of transcendence in S-D logic and a final reflection on how this relates to the compelling value proposition at the core of the logic.