Susi Geiger

• PhD, Dublin City University
• Full Professor of Markets Organisations and Society at University College Dublin

We investigate how temporality matters in processes of valuation. Taking our empirical point of departure in the case of a novel gene therapy that has been the centre of a heated pricing debate, we explore how the ‘goodness’ of such a pharmaceutical good was negotiated by researchers, patients, pharmaceutical companies and regulators, and how these...

This paper formulates an affirmative non-binary conceptual basis for rethinking the growth/‘post-growth’ binary in the context of repair thinking. We propose the twin notions of resonant organizing and thriving as new imageries of a ‘hopeful’ organizing for a better world in transitional times. These notions arise from our diffractive engagement wi...

Market studies is a newly emerging field dedicated to understanding the origins, core concepts, theories and methods currently being used and developed to examine markets in the making. Providing a unique overview that introduces, positions and develops this highly fertile area of research, Market Studies is the first book to consolidate its themes...

Market studies is a newly emerging field dedicated to understanding the origins, core concepts, theories and methods currently being used and developed to examine markets in the making. Providing a unique overview that introduces, positions and develops this highly fertile area of research, Market Studies is the first book to consolidate its themes...

Market studies is a newly emerging field dedicated to understanding the origins, core concepts, theories and methods currently being used and developed to examine markets in the making. Providing a unique overview that introduces, positions and develops this highly fertile area of research, Market Studies is the first book to consolidate its themes...

This paper responds to calls for greater focus on public actors in market innovation, asking how public actors engage in market experiments to innovate public goods markets. We introduce the concept of market experiments, and particularly public actors’ roles in instigating and directing such experiments, to better understand how market innovation...

Algorithms are central in shaping platform markets, impacting not only calculation processes but also influencing market actors’ relationships and market structures more broadly. As “autonomous” market devices that are executable or operate without the need for human intervention, algorithms continuously organize, prioritize, and rank product profi...

The assetization of essential goods brings to high-income countries the logics of scarcity that have been dominant for long in low-to-middle income countries—fostering the rise of new forms of activism. Will this new activism strengthen already existing social movements or weaken them through more moderate politics? Building on interviews and the o...

Abstract Through a multiple case study of six digital startups in the healthcare ecosystem, we develop a framework of entry through innovation in a regulated ecosystem. The framework reveals the interplay of two dimensions that have not been examined in conjunction so far: 1) the degree of ecosystem disruption brought by the entrant's innovation; 2...

Entanglements between public and private entities in digital health are not new, yet we do not have full insight into how these public-private dances are choreographed or what notions of public value drive governments’ appetite for investing into or collaborating with private digital health firms around health data. We examine key events, actors, p...

This paper explores the complex relationships between recognition, collective action, and social (in)visibility of health conditions. We trace how collective action for recognition changes as conditions of visibility shift. We investigate how the Covid-19 global pandemic thrust one health condition (anosmia) and collective efforts around its recogn...

This paper draws on the ethics of care to investigate how citizens grappled with ethical tensions in the mundane practice of grocery shopping at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. We use this case to address the broader question of what it means ‘to care’ in the context of a crisis. Based on a qualitative longitudinal cross-country interview stud...

This paper problematises the notions of public or common good as weighed against individual sovereignty in the context of medical research by focusing on genetic research. We propose the notion of collective good as the good of the particular collective in which the research was conducted. We conducted documentary and interview-based research with...

Where market studies opened the theorizing of markets to concerns of various affected publics, we propose a new shift to further destabilize understandings of what markets are and can be. This shift considers how care, as an affective, ethical, and political force, figures in markets – and, moreover, to make room for care where it may currently be...

This article explores how heterogeneous and distributed forms of social-symbolic work combine over time to yield synergistic relationships that precipitate institutional change. We study a collective effort by patient activists to change the technological and regulatory standards of Type-1 diabetes care. We offer contributions to radical flank theo...

Calls for solidarity have been an ubiquitous feature in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we know little about how people have thought of and practised solidarity in their everyday lives since the beginning of the pandemic. What role does solidarity play in people’s lives, how does it relate to COVID-19 public health measures and how...

The controversies surrounding the heavily redacted contracts between the European Commission and COVID-19 vaccine producers have highlighted ‘transparency’ as a hotly debated concept in the pharmaceutical market. We combine research on transparency with literature on the organization of markets to investigate how such struggles over competing visio...

How does a social enterprise pursue its ethical mandate of social impact growth while navigating the perils of the most vulnerable stage in a venture’s life—scaling up? We observe a small inclusivity social enterprise attempting to scale up rapidly to create equality for people with disabilities throughout the world. Our embedded, ethnographic stud...

The aim of the SI is to bring to the fore the places in which cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) are formed; how place shapes the dynamics of CSPs, and how CSPs shape the specific settings in which they develop. The papers demonstrate that partnerships and place are intrinsically reciprocal: the morality and materiality inherent in places repeatedly...

We explore the role of affect in fuelling and sustaining political organizing in the case of an online Type-1 Diabetes community. Analysing this community’s interactions, we show that the drive towards political transformation is triggered by affective dissonance, but that this dissonance needs to be recurrently enacted through the balanced circula...

The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of health technologies to mitigate against the spread of the disease and improve care, dominantly including life-saving vaccines. But the pandemic has also highlighted that the current biopharmaceutical business model, based on the enclosure of these technologies and on the immense accumulation o...

The sudden and dramatic advent of the COVID-19 pandemic led to urgent demands for timely, relevant, yet rigorous research. This paper discusses the origin, design, and execution of the [PROJECT NAME] research commons, a large-scale, international, comparative, qualitative research project that sought to respond to the need for knowledge among resea...

This article describes the experiences of two market studies scholars who became involved in an Applied Research Centre aimed at developing a societally valuable market in digital health – an experience that ended in failure. We introduce the concept of epistemological liminality as a theoretical tool to problematise our own positionality as ‘marke...

This article, written by two members of the advocacy organisation Access to Medicines Ireland, analyses current discourses and practices around global COVID-19 vaccine distribution. As vast imbalances in vaccination coverage continue to characterise global vaccine distribution, we argue that some of the public discourses and distribution mechanisms...

Prices for new medications have strongly increased over the last decades, reaching levels that could endanger healthcare insurance systems. Focusing on the French case, this article builds on the structural approach of business power and investigates how this situation results from the construction of market boundaries that created unassailable spa...

Prior work on performativity has illustrated how theories intervene in economic organizing. We expand this body of research by studying how concepts, and particularly those that are loosely defined and/or not widely understood, provoke their own realities through experiments. We examine how different experimental set-ups allow these concepts to be...

Purpose This study aims to explore the interactions between two different and potentially complementary boundary resources in coordinating solution networks in a digital platform context: boundary spanners (those individuals who span interorganizational boundaries) and boundary interfaces (the devices that help coordinate interfirm relationships, e...

Vaccine uptake is essential to managing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and vaccine hesitancy is a persistent concern. At the same time, both decision-makers and the general population have high hopes for COVID-19 vaccination. Drawing from qualitative interview data collected in October 2020 as part of the pan-European SolPan study, this study explo...

This paper explores paradoxical tensions and their management in modular solution networks on digital platforms. A case study approach was adopted to examine how two firms in the lighting facility and ICT industries use digital platforms to coordinate their diverse, large and dynamic modular solution networks. Our findings reveal that due to contra...

Recent debates in public health and social sciences have shown how biofinancialization has been fuelled by patents’ transformation into ‘patent-as-assets’. This paper traces the historical construction of one such patent-as-asset bundle: the multi-billion worth architecture of patents behind the hepatitis C blockbuster drug sofosbuvir. Following th...

This article outlines and compares current and proposed global institutional mechanisms to increase equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, focusing on their institutional and operational complementarities and overlaps. It specifically considers the World Health Organization's (WHO’s) COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access) model as part of the Acce...

This conceptual chapter evokes Albert Hirschman’s classic distinction between “exit” and “voice” to ascertain the potential for individuals to voice their concerns in the context of sharing data for genetics and personalized precision medicine initiatives. It elaborates the emerging framework of participatory medicine as a form of “invited activism...

This introductory chapter charts the book’s trajectory by engaging with three interlinked key dynamics of contemporary healthcare—marketization, digitalization, and individualization. It draws on several theoretical frameworks to conceptualize notions of the common, collective, or public good and to consider how healthcare activism may play into de...

What is the role of civil society and activists in defining and defending the collective good in healthcare, especially in cases where that good seems to be heavily shaped by market dynamics? Presenting conceptual and empirical studies from a variety of healthcare contexts and theoretical perspectives, this book volume addresses this vital question...

Background : E-health or digital health technologies endeavour to connect key stakeholders and thereby lay the foundation for better integrated as well as potentially more patient-centered care. However, despite the promise of empowerment, efficiency and value, digital health has yet to become part of the daily lives of the people who care for pers...

We borrow the notion of field from institutional theory to think through how markets and their ‘outsides’–or at least one particular manifestation of an ‘outside’–stand in a dynamic and interactive relationship. We distinguish the field and the market in terms of issues versus exchange and identity versus position. We argue that the lack of clarity...

We bring together recent discussions on data capitalism and biocapitalization by studying value flows in consumer genomics firms—an industry at the intersection between health care and technology realms. Consumer genomics companies market genomic testing services to consumers as a source of fun, altruism, belonging and knowledge. But by maintaining...

This paper investigates market innovation that takes place at the intersection of previously weakly connected markets. Based on a longitudinal study of the development of the digital therapeutics market, we delineate the concept of combinatorial market innovation as a market innovation process that is characterized by the deliberate synthesis of ma...

In solution business, solution providers use boundary resources (i.e. the individuals/boundary spanners who span interorganizational boundaries and the interfaces that help coordinate interfirm relationships) to coordinate their networks. However, due to modularization and digitalization of solution process, these interfaces may have taken over or...

This paper reflects on the relationship between hi-tech disruption narratives and uncertainty. My main argument is that an economic sociology of the future is incomplete without addressing the 'demonic' or rather eschatological elements apparent in the promissory twin rhetoric of disruption and inevitability that a number of contemporary technology...

This paper reflects on the relationship between high-tech disruption narratives and uncertainty. My main argument is that an economic sociology of the future is incomplete without addressing the ‘demonic’ or rather eschatological elements apparent in the promissory twin rhetoric of disruption and inevitability that a number of contemporary technolo...

This paper explores how customer solution providers leverage digital platform architectures and particularly platform openness to exert control over complex organizational networks. A multiple case-study approach studies three companies with digital platforms that orchestrate solution networks in the LED and ICT industries. Our findings show that t...

We live in an era where models of governing are changing rapidly under multifaceted evolutionary pressures and where, at the same time, organizational fields are becoming increasingly networked. With this paper, we add to the field dynamics literature, focusing on the space where these evolutionary pressures coincide – the interactions of Governmen...

How should a focal firm manage or orchestrate its network partners, and how much control is needed in this process? This is an enduring question in business-to-business (B2B) research, and it is one that attains heightened relevance in an era where digital platforms in industrial networks proliferate. This research explores how servitized solution...

Background: Electronic referrals or e-referrals can be defined as the electronic transmission of patient data and clinical requests between health service providers. National electronic referral systems have proved challenging to implement due to problems of fit between the technical systems proposed and the existing sociotechnical systems. In see...

How do actors innovate markets in cases of perceived market failures? This paper’s aim is to examine what happens when a market is innovated or, as we call it, ‘redevised’ in situations where public and commercial interests significantly diverge. Market devices can serve an important function in such attempts to innovate markets: they are material...

Purpose Focussing on the dynamic nature of entrepreneurship, the purpose of this paper is to advance an understanding of entrepreneurial practice in phases of radical change, which the authors conceptualize as periods of liminality. A particular focus on the management of tension is taken to investigate destabilization of practices, sources of resi...

This article draws from two conceptual lenses – the sociology of expectations and market studies – to investigate the relationship between technology hype and market investments: which promises and expectations surround hype and how they come together to shape actors’ investments in an emerging market. We address this question through analysing a c...

In the not so distant future, if you wish to see a doctor, you’ll either “Uber” one and your nearest on-demand healthcare provider will be at your doorstep within 15 min or else you’ll book a videoconference with a virtual doctor who will carry out a remote consultation with the help of a full 24/7 record of your vital signs. These will be captured...

In many knowledge-intensive business-to-business settings the locus of interaction has shifted from stable, discrete, and articulated products and services to the exchange of somewhat nebulous capacities of problem-solving, innovation and R&D services. In these exchanges, tensions and conflicts between actors can arise in seeking clarity as to what...

This paper examines how environmental regulation is made operational when it legislates for modifications rather than the banning of products or substances. The continued circulation of such products draws attention to the heterogeneous conditions of their use and allows industry actors to accumulate evidence of the products’ polluting effects over...

The purpose of our article is to propose that compromising is a constitutive characteristic of those marketing systems that entail matters of public interest or concern. In such markets, actors design compromises as they encounter criticisms of and contending justifications for the market’s products, as these refer to price, efficiency in productio...

Recent research has used social enterprise as the “extreme” example of a hybrid organisation where business and charity logics and their respective organisational forms coexist and potentially collide. This paper explores the notion of a government as another, potentially more ‘extreme’ case of a hybrid organisation, particularly in the context of...

We investigate a body of data emanating from the 2008/2009 EU Pharmaceutical Sector Inquiry, interpreting the collection of submissions to it as a concerted attempt at market innovation that becomes fraught with challenge and contest. In the pharmaceutical market, interests associated with patient concerns, government budgets, global “Big Pharma,”...

Purpose – This study aims to examine how the temporal aspect of service consumption impacts the emotions that are created within consumers during service encounters. Design/methodology/approach – The authors adopted mobile phone or ‘SMS’ diaries to capture the emotions that participants experienced at the very moment they were being felt or ‘in-vi...

This paper investigates how early venture entrepreneurs engage in socially embedded practices to resource their firm. We contribute to an emerging literature that calls for a shift in perspective from “resource” as an object to “resourcing” as a practice. This shift entails a focus away from whom entrepreneurs know toward how they engage with their...

There are strong indications that sales practices are currently being redefined from the ground up and that many of the inherited conceptual models of selling will not hold into a future that is defined by new selling techniques and technologies. This paper introduces a research perspective that can provide an important source of insight into how s...

IMP researchers have examined conflict as a threat to established business relationships and commercial exchanges, drawing on theories and concepts developed in organization studies. We examine cases of conflict in relationships from the oil and gas industry's service sector, focusing on conflicts of interest and resources, and conflict as experien...

Sales practitioners continue to come to terms with the selling conditions of mature consumer and business markets. Mature markets display signs such as cost-focused competition, similarity in the perceived functionality of offerings, and multiple suppliers vying for highly knowledgeable and powerful customers. While researchers have noted that in m...

This article presents the results of a poll made among the members of the editorial and advisory boards of Valuation Studies. The purpose is to overview the topic that is the remit of the new journal. The poll focused on three questions: 1. Why is the study of valuation topical? 2. What specific issues related to valuation are the most pressing one...

This paper investigates how early venture entrepreneurs engage in socially embedded practices to resource their firm. We contribute to an emerging literature that calls for a shift in perspective from “resource” as an object to “resourcing” as a practice. This shift entails a focus away from whom entrepreneurs know toward how they engage with their...

This article provides a conceptual overview of theoretical approaches to the study of markets from across social science disciplines. These approaches are arranged according to the dimensions of socialization and materialization. While necessarily simplistic and non-exhaustive, such arrangement drives out some of the strengths and weaknesses of the...

This paper focuses on the work that market actors undertake in order to stabilize and de-stabilize market objects. We briefly revisit Igor Ansoff's classic product–market strategy matrix to show how marketing management literature typically equates stability in markets with commodification and inertia. To escape this inertia, marketers often ‘warm...

Current theory on transitional consumption seems to rest on the premises that (1) consumption facilitates role transitions; (2) consumers know how to consume their way through these transitions; (3) consumers are motivated to approach new roles; and (4) consumption solves liminality. This perspective, however, offers an incomplete picture of consum...

This article explores consumer vulnerability and the role of public policy by focusing on new mothers. Developing the consumer vulnerability model of Baker, Gentry, and Rittenburg, the authors consider how medical contexts, political and legal factors, economic resources, societal prescriptions, media representations, and the presence or absence of...

This chapter applies the concept of the trading zone to markets. It does so in order to highlight the multiple material, linguistic, and interpretative dimensions of actors' organizing, trading, buying, and selling work, which they normally undertake to secure an exchange. The trading zones also highlight the multiple areas of conflict, miscomprehe...

We propose a novel perspective on positioning by identifying goods and services first as market objects and then as marketing objects. As part of their normal marketing activities marketers position market objects and thereby provide means for other market actors to evaluate differences and similarities across an array of goods and services. Hence,...

This paper examines the definitions and uses of the network picture metaphor in industrial marketing research. Conceptually, the paper extends our understanding of networks and of representations of networks among researchers and practitioners as pictures or maps. A threefold interpretation is proposed of network pictures as representationalist, me...

We develop the concept of boundaries in the context of sales personnel and their counterparts encountering and negotiating these while they undertake work to shape markets and build relationships. Drawing on a case study from production chemistry, we show that market shaping implies a mutual development of relationships, goods and services exchange...

Purpose This article aims to position current sales research in relation to what academics perceive as important future research areas for sales theory and practice. It makes the argument that after a 20‐year period of rapid growth and almost a decade of a transition phase, sales research is now a mature area of academic inquiry. The paper seeks to...

This study focuses on mothers' perceptions of fathers' attitudes toward consumption decisions related to the introduction of the first child in the family. Two interviews were conducted with each respondent, pre- and post-natal, using the long interview method; in this paper we focus on pre-natal data. Data revealed that men, according to their par...

This study explores consumer empowerment in a maternity setting in the Republic of Ireland. Our results indicate that empowerment is a complex phenomenon influenced by many variables. While the current health services literature is focusing on active consumers of health services, our study shows that not all pregnant women have the same needs for a...

This article summarises the experience of two undergraduate schools of business, one in Ireland and one in the United States, in developing an international service learning programme for study-abroad students. Working from an already existing partnership, the schools established an academically- based programme with a support structure for student...

Abstract This paper presents a case study of product development in production chemistry, which is a sector of the upstream petroleum industry concerned broadly with the regular application of chemicals to ensure continuing production from oil and gas fields. Production chemistry companies,havea clear science baseand offer a hybrid of chemical solu...

Recent legal and societal developments have provided an impetus for rethinking retail opening hours in many European countries. In many of these countries, large supermarket chains are now developing an interest in extending their opening hours to a 24-hour regime. This paper discusses the conceptual foundations for understanding night-time shoppin...

Over the last decade, a steady stream of academic research and practitioner articles has examined the adoption and use of information technology (IT) applications in sales and customer services. In much of this literature, sales-related IT tools have been heralded as enhancing salespeople's customer service delivery, professionalism and general sal...

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the characteristics and parameters of salesperson learning within client relationships, thereby filling a noticeable gap in the knowledge of individual learning in a sales context. It also aims at advancing the discussion on the nature of learning and knowledge in sales and marketing. Design/methodology/appro...