Diversity, marketing practice and organisational evolution: Implications for the management of productive evolution

The prescriptive marketing literature emphasises a universal view of practice, and yet it is evident from observation that marketing practice varies among firms. This paper addresses the issue of explaining diversity in marketing practice in competitive space and over time. Diversity in competitive space reflects the existence of different routes to high performance. Diversity over time reflects some combination of change in the individual firm and change in a population of firms. In the former case, diversity is shaped by organisational change, in the latter by environmental change. Miles and Snow's (1978, 1986) well-established typology is used as a framework in the search for an explanation for the nature of diversity in competitive space. Evolutionary and ecological concepts are drawn on to suggest an explanation for the nature of diversity over time. Finally, given an understanding of the nature of diversity, implications for the management of ‘productive evolution’ are considered.