Unemployment in the international marketing profession is an instance of a seemingly narrow economic problem that, on closer examination, proves to be linked not only to many aspects of economics, but also to other social disciplines such as sociology, psychology, and organizational theory. Application of systems theory to this problem allows us to identify international marketing as a function of an emerging system, the global economy. Proceeding from this analysis we are able to gain a clearer understanding of the characteristics of unemployment in international marketing, and of probable future developments with respect to employment in the field.
The problem of unemployment among international marketing professionals may appear at first sight to be merely one small thread in the economic tapestry, and one seemingly of interest only to international marketers and their families. However, the entire tapestry of the world economy, and of the global community of which that world economy is a part, is made up of innumerable such threads. In tracing the course of this thread, and identifying its relationship to a broad range of other elements and factors, we may hope to gain one illuminating perspective on the whole, in the same way that travelling along one road through a region gives one a perspective of the landscape through which the road passes. The goal of this study is to perform such an examination, and in the course of it to demonstrate the applicability of systems theory as a tool for understanding complex systems of interactions. Systems theory itself is a tool that arose out of the increasingly felt need for a mode of analysis that would allow us to deal directly with the similarities of patterns in complex systems that are found to exist in widely varying disciplines (Boulding, 1968, pp. 84ff).
Our procedure in this discussion will be first to treat unemployment, international marketing, and the interaction of t...