Cross-subfield boundary permeability: A process framework for marketing discipline renewal capability

Abstract Increasing specialization has enabled marketing to develop deeper theoretical expertise, methodological sophistication, and cumulative knowledge across its subfields. However, specialization has also contributed to greater intellectual differentiation, creating boundaries that may constrain the movement and integration of knowledge across the discipline. Although recent scholarship has emphasized the importance of marketing discipline renewal, relatively little attention has been given to the conditions that enable increasingly specialized subfields to remain intellectually connected. This manuscript addresses this gap by advancing cross-subfield boundary permeability (CSBP) as a foundational enabling condition underlying marketing discipline renewal capability. Drawing on research on disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, boundary-spanning theory, and dynamic capabilities, the manuscript develops a process framework explaining how permeable intellectual, methodological, and institutional boundaries facilitate communication, cooperation, coordination, and value co-creation across marketing’s subfields. These boundary-spanning processes enable knowledge to be shared, integrated, and combined, thereby strengthening the discipline’s capacity for continual adaptation and cumulative knowledge development. The framework further identifies relational, structural, and cognitive antecedents that foster CSBP, explains how CSBP facilitates the boundary-spanning processes that contribute to marketing discipline renewal capability, and shows how renewal capability can strengthen the conditions supporting future CSBP. In doing so, the manuscript provides a process-based explanation of how marketing can preserve the benefits of increasing specialization while maintaining the cross-subfield integration necessary for scientific and societal relevance.