AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
THE IMPACT OF ADAPTION MANAGEMENT IN CONJUNCTION WITH PROFILE ORIENTED
MARKETING FOR A HIGH URBAN, SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
QUALITY
a
REBECCA RESCHREITER
University of Latvia, Raina bulvaris 19, Riga, LV-1586, Latvia
a
r.reschreiter@gmx.at
Abstract: Cities are the carriers and pioneers of socio-economic change and diverse
development trends. In times to come, cities and regions definitely need clearly
structured and consistent development plans. In this context demands in reference to
the planning and usage of urban living space of cities and regions are increasing and
require the use of new profiling systems. The main purpose of this paper is to provide
an empirical evidence on the importance of the adaption management and profile
oriented marketing systems for a clearly structured future and profile oriented urban
development concept/system for the new demands of public/city planer in order to
provide a high sustainable, competitive and innovative developmental quality for their
inhabitants to live and work in. This future oriented development, create a challenging
situation for the diverse districts. With the help of systematic, dynamic development
processes the goal can be achieved. Firstly you have to figure out, how you can
connect and implement profile oriented marketing and adaption management.
Therefore you have to clear the question, is adaption management important to profile
oriented marketing and development systems? The Answer is: Yes, it is! Adaptive
management is a valuable tool and significantly correlated with sustainable marketing
development processes. In this context, we also bear in mind that today innovation,
diversity and networked thinking, are significant factors. Therefore the
planer/organizations serves as a role model for the inhabitants and needs to be
adapted to the new usage and specially needs at every step. The new profiling system
offers a methodical basis and adaption management provides the soil.
Keywords: adaption management, planning process, profile-oriented marketing,
sustainable development
1 Introduction
The demographic change shows a significant, unambiguous
direction. Over the coming years cities substantially continue
with strong growth. On the other side, it is likely that many
peripheral and structurally weak regions are currently standing at
a watershed in terms of their regional orientation and in
particular are affected by struggle with massive declining
population levels and an increasing number of elderly people.
(Kern, 2015) However, in this connection, we must also bear in
mind that today innovation, diversity and networked thinking,
are significant and even more important aspects in a sustainable
urban and competitiveness regional development and go hand in
hand. Moreover, the basis of an efficient communication
strategy, focus in particular on developing long-term, innovative
and interlinked thinking.
According to current reports of the United Nations, half of the
world’s population is living in cities and it is expected that this
number increase to two thirds of the world’s population by 2050.
There has been an increasing process of merging cities and their
surrounding regions into a metropolitan figure and a distinct
separation and hierachization of spaces has become difficult.
Therefore cities are expanding to regions (Zibell, 2003, p. 23),
creating a homogenous entity of space regarding geographic,
economic or political criteria.
Thus, cities are subject to constant change and diverse
development trends (Ramsauer, 2012, p.2). Therefore, the
importance of urban living space is constantly increasing, as
cities are the housing-, work-, and life-centers of most people. In
this context demands in reference to the usage, planning and
design of urban places, spaces and cities are increasing (Welch
Guerra, 2010, p. 5) thus require an innovative thinking manager,
planer, leader and the use of new profiling systems.
Space however, has in the past few decades been redifined by
sociologists (Schroer, 2006, p. 9). Urban living space has long
been viewed as the setting of social and economical
developments. However, urban living space can be viewed as
more than that. Current theorists argue that people are constantly
reconstructing space in their daily actions. Urban space is no
longer the setting but becomes an integral part of social and
economic processes and is characterized by suburbanization and
structural change and requires to understand city planning as a
dynamic development process. (Löw, 2008, p. 51). According to
Heinrichs (1999, p. 9), there is a growing mutual competition
between cities and regions, much like between companies.
Profile oriented marketing (Kellner, 2007) has demonstrated
successful in distinguishing goods and services from those of
competitors, because the profile, incorporating the values of an
organization gives the product an emotional fingerprint.
The aim of this paper is to understand, how profile oriented
marketing can be implemented to increase the attractiveness of
the urban living space of cities and regions. In the case of urban
living space this role is taken by innovation, diversity and
culture. Therefore, the doctoral thesis will be particularly
concerned with the question, is profile oriented marketing a
suitable tool to increase the attractivity of cities or regions to
individuals/citizens or organisations/companies and thereby
enhance the developmental quality.
In times to come, cities, communities and regions definitely need
clearly structured and consistent development plans in order to
provide a secure social and economic environment for their
inhabitants to work and live in. Therefore it is the task of public
manager, city- and communal planer and those who took on
responsibility to make sure that short-, middle- and long-term
requirements of the citizens are met as best as possible, so that a
high, sustainable, innovative, urban development quality can be
achieved (Kellner, 2006, p. 223).
The themes and content of adaption management and sustainable
urban and regional development cannot easily be separated from
each other, as they are often both overlapping and interrelated.
Thus, it appears to be important to address the question from a
management perspective of the role of adaption management in
profile oriented marketing for sustainable, innovative economic
and social development on the one hand and from a marketing
perspective on the other hand. Therefore, this paper contains two
sections, dealing with the questions how the environment needs
and changes to be organized and how the managers/planers
needs to act, respectively, to promote innovation and diversity
for a high sustainable development quality. A third section
adresses, how these two perspectives can be integrated.
2 Adaption management issues
It is important to translate and describe the term and aspects of
adaptive management in an easily, clearly and comprehensible
way to put it in practice, to ensure that becomes reality and are
systematically integrated into daily actions that are oriented
towards the specific needs and the new usage and planning.
Adaptive management was introduced in the 1970s, by a group
of ecologists and can be viewed as „a structured and systematic
process for continually improving decisions, management
policies, and practices by learning from the outcomes of
decisions previously taken.“ (Intaver Institute, 2014)
This definition basically translates into „learning by doing’.
Adaptive management is now used for all kinds of projects
outside the field of ecology. The key to adaptive project
management is to manage projects based on learning from actual
project performance and to learn via the use of quantitative
methods. Therefore, adaptive management includes the
following elements (National Research Council, 2004, Figure 1):
The formulation of management objectives, which are
regularly visited and revised.
A model of the system being managed.
A range of management choices.
Responsive power structures.
Monitoring and evaluation of outcomes.
A mechanism(s) for incorporating learning into future
decisions.
- page 82 -