Marketing and the Common Good

Essays from Notre Dame on Societal Impact

Patrick E. Murphy, John F. Sherry Jr., John F. Sherry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415828826
• eBook ISBN: 9781134091140
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Marketing is among the most powerful cultural forces at work in the contemporary world, affecting not merely consumer behaviour, but almost every aspect of human behaviour. While the potential for marketing both to promote and threaten societal well-being has been a perennial focus of inquiry, the current global intellectual and political climate has lent this topic extra gravitas.

Through original research and scholarship from the influential Mendoza School of Business, this book looks at marketing's ramifications far beyond simple economic exchange. It addresses four major topic areas: societal aspects of marketing and consumption; the social and ethical thought; sustainability; and public policy issues, in order to explore the wider relationship of marketing within the ethical and moral economy and its implications for the common good.

By bringing together the wide-ranging and interdisciplinary contributions, it provides a uniquely comprehensive and challenging exploration of some of the most pressing themes for business and society today.

PART I

Introduction

1

THE COMMON GOOD

The enduring effort to re-center marketing

Patrick E. Murphy

The genesis for this book outlining the contributions of the Marketing faculty members in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame came in a conversation that John Sherry and I had about similar books in which he had been involved at another university. These texts promoted the wide-ranging interests of the marketing faculty at that school. What we discussed was the unique positioning and longstanding commitment of Notre Dame's Department of Marketing to the general area of marketing and society, including ethics, public policy, and a number of societal issues.

This conversation led to a symposium entitled “Marketing and the Common Good” (MCG) in April 2011 held on the Notre Dame campus. The common good was the university-wide theme of a year-long set of discussions, presentations, and symposia on the topic. The MCG symposium explored the tendency of marketing to ramify far beyond simple economic exchange, into the realms of ethics and moral economy, issues of public policy, and practices of accommodation and resistance to consumer culture. Early versions of most of the chapters in this book were presented at that time.

The ensuing period has been one of revising, polishing, and in some instances, generating new manuscripts that fill the pages of this volume. The contributions fall into one of five general parts – societal aspects of marketing and consumption, Catholic Social Thought (CST) issues, sustainability issues, public policy issues, and ethical issues. The book ends with a concluding chapter and an afterword. At the end of this introductory essay, I offer a preview about each of the seventeen chapters that make up the text.

Origins of the common good

The concept of the common good has many parents. The disciplines of political science, ecology, education, philosophy, and theology all have contributed to our understanding of the concept.

The study of ecology examines the inter-relationships between people and nature. Two significant articles appeared in the 1960s that argued against a selfish view of humanity. In “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Garrett Hardin (1968) persuasively argued that individuals pursuing narrow self-interest would use up the commons and leave few resources for the future. This theme ties in with the common good in that the “commons” must be protected. About the same time, Kenneth Boulding (1966), a Nobel laureate, coined the phrase “spaceship earth” and contrasted it with the prevailing cowboy economy which looked at natural resources as being unlimited. Although he did not use the common good to bolster his position, his view of the limitations of a resource-depleting economy flies in the face of what most would view as being good for others.

Within the philosophical literature, the common good is thought to have originated over two thousand years ago from the classic writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. One more recent conception of the common good follows the utilitarian theory which examines outcomes of decisions that maximize the happiness or utility of individuals within a society (Mill 1979). Some call it “the greatest good for the greatest number” and thus would state that such an ideal would lead to the common good since most are better off. Critics might argue that utilitarianism does not account for distributive justice (e.g., some individuals are harmed significantly while the majority may benefit moderately) and within the business sector, the concept of “economic utilitarianism” may mean that the common good could be reduced to whatever decision leads to the most profit or financial return for the company.

The late contemporary ethicist, John Rawls, offers a complete account of the basic structure of society and provides a more robust definition of the common good as “certain general conditions that are… equally to everyone's advantage” (1971, p. 246). In fact, he makes the distinction between the “good,” actively creating a better world, and the “just,” which creates a fair, liberal social infrastructure. In taking a bit of poetic license with his theoretical and much acclaimed position, we might argue that the “common” good would be a society with both (the) good and just characteristics.

Within theological circles, a general position that is advanced is that the “Golden Rule” promotes the common good. In what is not a surprising finding, the Golden Rule is present in virtually all organized religions (Murphy et al. 2005). Some would criticize this position in that such a rule leaves much open to interpretation and the common good goes beyond what one would consider as his/her duties to others.

The most extensive theological treatment of the common good is found in Catholic Social Teaching. Several of the Papal encyclicals make reference to the common good and this ideal is considered one of the major principles of CST that is not only followed by Catholics but many other faith-centered individuals. Although there are many references to the common good within these documents, one of the best summaries of what the common good entails is captured by the following passage:

Because of the increasingly close interdependence which is gradually extending to the entire world, we are today witnessing an extension of the role of the common good, which is the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily. The resulting rights and obligations are consequently the concern of the entire human race. Every group must take into account the needs and legitimate aspirations of every other group, and even those of the human family as a whole.

(Paul VI 1965)

The common good and contemporary society

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, further discussion of the common good has occurred by a number of observers. They come from a variety of perspectives:

We face a choice between a society where people accept modest sacrifices for a common good or a more contentious society where groups selfishly protect their own benefits.

(Robert Samuelson, Newsweek writer,
quoted in Velazquez et al. undated)

Solving the current crisis in our health care system – rapidly rising costs and dwindling access – requires replacing the current “ethic of individual rights” with an “ethic of the common good.”

(Daniel Callahan, bioethics expert, quoted in Velasquez et al. undated)

This kind of constructive, enlarging experience with the other counters the tribal fear of the outsider and tills the ground in which a seed of commitment – not just to me and mine, but to a larger, more inclusive common good – can be planted.

(Parks et al. 1996, p. 65, emphasis in the original)

These quotations place the common good in a larger context than mere individual selfish interests. Furthermore, the seeds and planting analogy in the Parks quote underscores the importance of commitment to the common good. In the business and marketing, the stakeholder orientation presupposes that a broader view of the firm is necessary in today's complicated and interconnected world (Laczniak and Murphy 2012). In fact, the emphasis on sustainable marketing practices views future generations, or even the environment itself, as a stakeholder. Similarly, discussions of corporate social responsibility highlight the necessity of taking into consideration the needs of society beyond just those of customers, employees, and stockholders.

Common good in marketing presupposes a broader context than just consumers buying products from marketers. Many other stakeholders must be drawn into the discussion. In an article entitled, “The Stakeholder Theory and the Common Good,” Argandona (1998) argues that the common good should serve as one of the foundations of stakeholder theory. Within a particular company, the common good is the fulfillment of the company's purpose to create the conditions where all participants in the firm can accomplish personal goals. Thus, there can be a common good both inside and outside the firm. This foundation for stakeholder theory in the common good is not to say that the common good can be translated into a list of rights and duties for a company. Rather, Argandona explains what these two concepts mean in practice:

However, the theory of the common good introduces a major change in the traditional approach to stakeholders. The approach identifies stakeholders as being those who have an “interest” in the company (so that the firm, in turn, may have an “interest” in satisfying their demands) and this may provide a sufficient basis for a positive theory of the organization (although, probably, incomplete). The theory of the common good is based on the classic concept of “good”: the company does “good” to many people, to some by obligation and to others more or less involuntarily. And “it must do good” to certain groups by virtue of its obligation to contribute to the common good, which goes from the common good of the company itself to that of the local community, the country and all humankind, including future generations. In any case, the concept of good seems to provide a more appropriate foundation for an ethical theory than the concept of interest.

(Argandona 1998, p. 1099)

In a recent influential book (What Money Can't Buy), Michael Sandel, a Harvard government professor, takes aim at what he calls the “era of market triumphalism” by persuasively advocating that there are many things in life that money cannot buy. He criticizes the commodification of blood donorship, using the criteria of fairness and corruption. By fairness Sandel means that some individuals in society can readily afford to pay a financial price for virtually anything, but the poor, uneducated, and vulnerable will be left out. The corrosive tendency of markets means putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt them. In his chapter on “Naming Rights” he notes that the corrosive effects of advertising matters less in the grocery aisle than it does in the public square, where naming rights and corporate sponsorships are becoming widespread (p. 189). These naming rights have become pervasive, going beyond ballparks and skyboxes to police cars and school buses with corporate logos on them.

In the last few pages of his book, he takes aim at our consumer culture dominated by marketing, but concludes with a call for the common good:

It isn't easy to teach students to be citizens, capable of thinking critically about the world around them, when so much of childhood consists of basic training for a consumer society. At a time when many children come to school as walking billboards of logos and labels and licensed apparel, it is all the more difficult – and all the more important – for schools to create some distance from a popular culture steeped in the ethos of consumerism ….

Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life. What matters is that people of different backgrounds and social positions encounter one another, and bump up against one another, in the course of everyday life. For this is how we learn to negotiate and abide our differences, and how we come to care for the common good.

And so, in the end, the question of markets is really a question about how we want to live together. Do we want a society where everything is up for sale? Or are there certain moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?

(Sandel 2012, pp. 200–201)

Another recent text (Skidelsky and Skidelsky 2012) outlines what the authors indicate is the “good life” and their description is very similar to what we are calling the common good in this volume. Their contention is that almost all things are viewed as marketable and this detracts from a larger vision of society:

The continued pursuit of growth is not only unnecessary to realizing the basic goods; it may actually damage them. The basic goods are essentially non-marketable: they cannot properly be bought or sold. An economy geared to maximizing market value will tend to crowd them out or to replace them with marketable surrogates. The result is a familiar kind of corruption. Personality becomes part of the jargon of advertising, with consumers of the most everyday products said to be “expressing” or “defining” themselves. Friendship is no longer the ethically serious relationship it was for Aristotle but an intrigue for the enjoyment of leisure. Meanwhile, leisure itself is subject to the same economizing logic that governs production, with sports, games and nightclubs striving to pack the maximum of excitement into the minimum of time. “The market penetrates areas of life which had stayed outside the re...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Societal aspects of marketing and consumption
• Part III Catholic Social Thought issues in marketing
• Part IV Sustainability issues in marketing
• Part V Public policy issues in marketing
• Part VI Ethical issues in marketing
• Part VII Conclusion
• Index