Date: 13 March 2026, Friday
Time: 13.30 – 14.30
“Multi-stakeholder market shaping for sustainability: An institutional fields perspective”
by
Kaisa Koskela-Huotari
Stockholm School of Economics
This is an online seminar. To request event details please send a message to department.
Abstract
Marketing scholars increasingly advocate for meso-level interventions to complement consumer-focused sustainability efforts. Responding to calls for research on markets as levers for systemic change, this study examines how sustainability-related issues are enacted in multi-stakeholder market-shaping efforts and the forms these efforts take. Drawing on institutional field theory—and particularly the concepts of exchange and issue fields—we conduct a multi-case study of markets exhibiting market shaping for sustainability. Our findings reveal substantial diversity in the aims pursued within these efforts.
To explain this diversity, we identify four pathways of sustainability enactment in market-shaping efforts—two for challengers and two for market incumbents—driven by differences in perceived legitimacy gaps. We also delineate four types of market-shaping efforts—maintaining the status quo, settlement-specific reforming, settlement-independent reforming, and contracting the market—based on stakeholders’ orientation towards the issue field. This research advances theory on market shaping for sustainability, and offers actionable insights for navigating the complexity of multi-stakeholder market-shaping processes.
Bio
Dr. Kaisa Koskela-Huotari is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing and Strategy at the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden.
Kaisa is a theory enthusiast who enjoys applying insights from systems thinking, service-dominant logic, and institutional theory to better understand phenomena such as value creation, innovation, design, market strategies, and sustainability. Methodologically, her expertise lies in conceptual, qualitative, and abductive approaches. Her work has been published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Service Management, Journal of Strategic Marketing, among others. Kaisa also serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Service Management and AMS Review, and is a member of the editorial review boards for the Journal of Service Research and Journal of Business Research. Her paper with Josina Vink was honored with the 2022 Journal of Service Research Best Article Award, and in 2023, she received the Mary Jo Bitner “Rising Star in Services” Award.