Collaborative Systems Thinking for Social Change

Abstract

Traditional individual-level social marketing approaches have proven inadequate for resolving complex wicked problems. The socially complex nature of these problems means that responsibility and power are distributed among broader systems of stakeholders, implying that long-term change is achievable only from collaborative efforts among stakeholders. Through an exploration of the marketing meaning of collaboration, and analysis of the emerging social marketing systems literature, this chapter proposes a typology of collaborative systems thinking for social change which incorporates interactional, relational, and dynamic aspects of systems for informing theory and practice for social change processes and outcomes.