Generative mechanisms in project marketing - an agenda for inquiry

Project-based exchanges have become the dominant mode of doing business for many industrial firms, and therefore research into project marketing activities has come to be of interest for many B2B academicians. In this study, we contribute to this discourse by proposing three macro-level generative mechanisms for connecting project marketing to business performance. To do so, we outline a critical realist philosophy of science and suggest generative mechanisms that constitute business performance. Specifically, the mechanisms we propose are: (1) project construction, (2) project implementation, and (3) project transition & leveraging. Additionally, we suggest that these mechanisms and the micro-mechanisms of which they are constituted could be explored from a critical realist perspective through the use of event-structure analysis (ESA) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA).