AMS ReviewPub Date : 2025-08-21DOI: 10.1007/s13162-025-00320-1
Mark Peterson, Bård Tronvoll, Julia Fehrer
{"title":"Theories of sustainability: Re-imagining a marketing-indigenous understanding of sustainability","authors":"Mark Peterson, Bård Tronvoll, Julia Fehrer","doi":"10.1007/s13162-025-00320-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-025-00320-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Sustainability demands system-level transformation, yet marketing theory remains largely grounded in firm-centric, transactional, and equilibrium-based assumptions that are ill-suited to address planetary-scale challenges. This article responds to the need for more conceptually ambitious marketing scholarship capable of grappling with sustainability as a dynamic, contested, and future-oriented phenomenon. We identify key conceptual and methodological barriers that have constrained sustainability theorizing in marketing and examine how foundational perspectives within the discipline can be re-imagined and extended to meet these demands. Through a review of conceptual contributions in <i>AMS Review</i>, we trace how sustainability-related thinking has evolved within the field and assess the potential of three marketing-indigenous theories—Service-Dominant Logic, Resource-Advantage Theory, and Market Shaping—to inform the development of sustainability theory. Building on this foundation, we propose a future research agenda structured around four interlinked themes: (1) advancing system-level theorizing, (2) reimagining stakeholder responsibility to include nature and future generations, (3) conceptualizing sustainability as a dynamic resource domain, and (4) enabling prospective theorizing to support the shaping of more sustainable market futures.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"15 1-2","pages":"3 - 22"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13162-025-00320-1.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145011457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AMS ReviewPub Date : 2025-08-01DOI: 10.1007/s13162-025-00314-z
Helge Löbler
{"title":"Commentary: Towards a theory of sustainability and sustainable marketing","authors":"Helge Löbler","doi":"10.1007/s13162-025-00314-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-025-00314-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>The term sustainability has received much attention in many spheres: in scientific discourse, international negotiations, policy, marketing, business, media and elsewhere. While the use of the term sustainability has become almost inflationary in both science and society, the work on theories of sustainability has received much less attention. This paper provides theoretical work on sustainability. Thereby it uses a non-anthropocentric approach. Based on accepted knowledge from natural sciences five processes are identified that conceptualize sustainability. Building on this, a necessary and sufficient condition is developed as theorems for sustainability. A proposition lays the foundation for identifying possible threats to sustainability. The paper then discusses sustainability and marketing with two further propositions.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"15 1-2","pages":"48 - 58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13162-025-00314-z.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145011494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AMS ReviewPub Date : 2025-07-26DOI: 10.1007/s13162-025-00315-y
Rolf Findsrud, Martin Hanssen, David Sörhammar
{"title":"Toward a theory of sustainable resource integration","authors":"Rolf Findsrud, Martin Hanssen, David Sörhammar","doi":"10.1007/s13162-025-00315-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-025-00315-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The concept of sustainability has fostered increased interest among service researchers, particularly in relation to making service ecosystems more sustainable. While this growing body of work has examined relevant drivers and barriers and explored strategies for facilitating such transitions, the concept of sustainable resource integration remains underdeveloped. With no clear definition to guide research and practice, the need for theorizing resource integration from a sustainability perspective is key. To address this gap, the present study employed a theory adaptation approach, drawing on service-dominant logic (domain theory) and sustainability and circular economy (method theories) to define sustainable resource integration as using resources in ways that are materially supportable, performatively viable, and temporally adaptive, such that the activities can be continued without undermining the systemic conditions it depends upon. In addition to a definition, the paper provides three propositions as a foundation for theorizing sustainable resource integration and its role in the evolution of service ecosystems.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"15 1-2","pages":"142 - 156"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13162-025-00315-y.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145011740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AMS ReviewPub Date : 2025-07-18DOI: 10.1007/s13162-025-00312-1
Dan R. Bradbury, J. Joseph Cronin
{"title":"Environmentally friendly but strategically useful? A systematic review of marketing’s consideration of green initiatives","authors":"Dan R. Bradbury, J. Joseph Cronin","doi":"10.1007/s13162-025-00312-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-025-00312-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Whether called environmental, social, and governance (ESG), sustainable, or green, efforts to gain a market advantage by providing products that do not compromise people or the planet (‘green initiatives’) are notably increasing. While marketing scholarship has extensively examined consumers’ psychological reactions to such initiatives, primarily focusing on consumer well-being, a critical gap persists. Current research offers insufficient insight into how these efforts concretely benefit firms, aid policymakers, and enhance provider and societal well-being through tangible user responses like purchase behaviors, thereby limiting advancements in both marketing theory and practice. This systematic review (62 articles, 1997–2024) addresses the aforementioned gap by not just examining the effects of firms’ green initiatives on user psychological responses, but also the potential implications for provider and society well-being. Our findings highlight significant shortcomings in the current literature: (1) a commonly accepted definition of “green” marketing strategies is missing, (2) current measures of green perceptions appear to be unidimensional, (3) the behavioral outcomes of green initiatives are understudied, and (4) the literature offers limited insight as to how consumers respond to different types of green initiatives. In response to these shortcomings, a consensus definition of green initiatives is offered, factors that drive consumers’ assessments of green strategic initiatives are identified, a model depicting the antecedents of and outcomes from green initiatives is offered to suggest how such efforts have utility for providers, users, and society, and a research agenda is suggested.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"15 1-2","pages":"261 - 288"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145011756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AMS ReviewPub Date : 2025-07-11DOI: 10.1007/s13162-025-00313-0
Mark Peterson, Bård Tronvoll, Julia A. Fehrer
{"title":"Welcome to the AMS Review’s Theories of Sustainability special issue","authors":"Mark Peterson, Bård Tronvoll, Julia A. Fehrer","doi":"10.1007/s13162-025-00313-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-025-00313-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"15 1-2","pages":"1 - 2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145011732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AMS ReviewPub Date : 2025-07-04DOI: 10.1007/s13162-025-00310-3
Michael Ahearne, Molly Ahearne
{"title":"Designing sales compensation for impact: A conversation with Chad Albrecht of ZS associates","authors":"Michael Ahearne, Molly Ahearne","doi":"10.1007/s13162-025-00310-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-025-00310-3","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article presents an in-depth interview with Chad Albrecht, Principal Emeritus and longtime sales compensation lead at ZS, focusing on best practices and evolving strategies in sales force incentive compensation. Drawing from decades of consulting experience and insights from academic literature, Albrecht outlines practical frameworks for optimizing pay mix, metric selection, payout curves, and compensation frequency. The discussion highlights the challenges and trade-offs faced by firms in designing incentive systems that are strategically aligned, motivational, and fiscally responsible. In addition to offering tactical advice for practitioners, the article identifies several underexplored areas for future academic research, including ROI measurement, performance distribution modeling, and behavioral responses to compensation design. The conversation underscores the need for closer collaboration between industry and academia to build more effective and evidence-based incentive systems.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"15 1-2","pages":"302 - 306"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145011595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AMS ReviewPub Date : 2025-06-25DOI: 10.1007/s13162-025-00307-y
Ben Wooliscroft, James Wilkes
{"title":"Sustainable provisioning systems: Extending Alderson’s transvection analysis to detect value loss, power asymmetry and underperforming markets","authors":"Ben Wooliscroft, James Wilkes","doi":"10.1007/s13162-025-00307-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-025-00307-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Business research has offered many tools to understand the opportunity for single firms to create or realise value in the provisioning system. The majority of sustainability tools also relate to single firms, or households. Sustainability is a whole of system shift and we require tools to understand the relationship between different members of the provisioning system and the distribution of costs (internal and externalities) and profits through the system. Building on the work of Wroe Alderson, we provide a tool—the extended transvection—to analyse a provisioning system that provides insights into: information flows, value creation/capture/loss, risk, externalities, equity and fairness, and underperforming provisioning systems. Together these insights allow us to see the sustainability of the provisioning system. The extended transvection also allows for considering scenarios regarding adjusted/alternate provisioning systems.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"15 1-2","pages":"59 - 73"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13162-025-00307-y.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145011770","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AMS ReviewPub Date : 2025-06-24DOI: 10.1007/s13162-025-00303-2
Sakhr Bani-Khaled, Graça Azevedo, Jonas Oliveira
{"title":"Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors and firm value: A systematic literature review of theories and empirical evidence","authors":"Sakhr Bani-Khaled, Graça Azevedo, Jonas Oliveira","doi":"10.1007/s13162-025-00303-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-025-00303-2","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This systematic literature review critically examines the theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence linking Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors to firm value by analysing 75 studies published between 2015 and 2023 from the Scopus database. Employing a PRISMA-based methodology, this review identifies dominant theories—including Stakeholder, Agency, and Legitimacy theories—that explain the varied impacts of ESG on firm value. The evidence suggests that ESG integration generally enhances corporate reputation and performance; however, these effects are highly context-specific and influenced by regional, sectoral, and governance variations. Key limitations include the exclusive reliance on the Scopus database, which may overlook relevant studies in non-indexed journals, and the predominance of secondary data, which might not capture the nuanced effects of ESG practices. Additionally, heterogeneity in ESG metrics complicates cross-study comparisons, highlighting the need for more standardised scoring systems. The findings underscore significant research gaps, particularly the need for cross-country and sector-specific studies, and advocate for methodological advancements such as mixed methods and longitudinal approaches to better understand ESG’s long-term impacts. Implications for practice include the necessity for companies to tailor ESG strategies to their specific contexts and for policymakers to promote standardised ESG disclosures. This review provides a foundation for future research to explore more nuanced, context-aware approaches to ESG, thereby advancing its role in shaping corporate valuation in accounting and organizational studies.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"15 1-2","pages":"228 - 260"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145011622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AMS ReviewPub Date : 2025-06-19DOI: 10.1007/s13162-025-00311-2
Michael Ahearne, Molly Ahearne
{"title":"Designing sales incentives: Opportunities for research with impact","authors":"Michael Ahearne, Molly Ahearne","doi":"10.1007/s13162-025-00311-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s13162-025-00311-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7786,"journal":{"name":"AMS Review","volume":"15 1-2","pages":"307 - 312"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145011925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}