CAPITULO II: MARCO TEÓRICO
2.6. Concepto de Mezcla de Marketing de Servicios
The journey begins with references to theories that relate to transition both as a concept and as a learning and development process. Before I present them, I want to refer to two important issues. The first concerns the processes which determined my decisions on the intellectual positioning of a thesis on transition. The literature on transition is disparate and fragmented, but it helps me to create a theoretical melange that constitutes the basis on which I construct my hypothesis. The second is the presentation of a clearly stated rationale, for being selective in my engagement with different debates relating to transition and not using more fully the literature on learning and identity, something that may disappoint the reader.
The first difficulty that I encountered when I decided to look at how to re- define transition as a socio-psychological condition, was that there is no literature that refers specifically and exclusively to transition. Nor was there any specific reference that could help me to construct my own research framework on transition. The literature that implicitly refers to transition is basically the literature that relates to issues of personal development, individual change and learning. This literature is diverse and comes from different areas and disciplines. They include psychology, sociology, philosophy and anthropology. Gradually, I realised that it is impossible to look at transition as an isolated issue, unless I create a context in which to locate it. In order to create such a context, I decided to look at the literature that refers to transition as a condition that constitutes part of a long process. I believed that this would help me to find my way and create a narrative in which I could submit my own definition of transition. In the beginning I intentionally avoid seeing transition in terms of a specific learning theory or theory
of individual development. I believe that if I had located transition within the framework of a specific learning theory from the beginning, I would not have had the opportunity to create the rules of my own ‘language game‘.
At this stage of the journey, I am unaware of the nature of transition and to what it relates. I am working through the bibliography to create my own channels of thinking. So far, my limited personal involvement into a socio-psychological situation that I identify as transition, does no more than enable me to speculate on its contexts, but it is this speculation which determines the bodies of literature that I use to create a substantial background for the development of my research hypothesis. The fact that I do not refer to the same body of literature in relation to the expression of my thoughts on transition, does not mean that I ignore its significance for my analysis. Nevertheless, I intentionally avoid critiquing that literature in the light of my later observations. Instead, at each successive stage of the thesis, a new body of literature serves to construct the platform of the argument being developed. This is a tactic that I follow throughout my journey. As I progress with the research I realise that I cannot go back to the previously examined literature without taking account of. At the stage I am describing now, I do not know what my findings will be. Therefore, I cannot determine a literature that will only be relevant as they become known. In this first part of the thesis for example, I am only describing the body of literature that helps me to become more familiar with some of the theoretical contexts in which transition can be located. In the next part, I use a different body of literature to create a research framework, and in the last part I use another body of literature in order to fit my definition of transition into a narrative, the context of which is determined by the results of the empirical research.
I do not choose four different bodies of literature in the thesis according to a pre-set plan. It is something that I find I have to do as I progress with the research. This process is complex and in some cases difficult to be understood. It is worthwhile because it helps me to test the limits of my thinking in so far creativity and language efficiency allow me to see if my own definition can be incorporated within a new narrative about transition, and also if it can be represented with visual schemes. For this reason, each time I move to the next stage of my journey, I give an overview of the literature to which I refer, so that the reader can have a general idea of what to expect.
Now, I look at the different approaches to transition in the four bodies of literature and I synthesise them in order to create the basis on which I construct my research hypothesis. They are disparate and fragmented. In most cases transition is not seen as a unique condition that characterises every aspect of human life, but as an edging issue. It would be practically impossible to refer separately to all the existing theories of learning, development, change and identity that implicitly refer to transition. In this respect I have decided in the following chapter to look at transition from three angles and create a blend of anthropological, sociological, psychological and feminist approaches that make a more explicit reference to it. The purpose is to bring transition forward as a meaningful issue by attempting to isolate it from other issues to which these approaches may refer. Transition therefore is looked at as:
a. a spatio-temporal condition that relates to phases or cycles of life including death,
b. a socio-psychological condition that relates to decision-making, un-learning, emotional
instability, construction of identity and cognitive change,
c. a learning condition that relates to the deconstruction and reconstruction of
The three perspectives are related, but in order to connect the different approaches to transition and produce a coherent result where transition appears to be the central issue, I give some research examples that relate to the way higher education students approach transition to work. I do this in order to create some consensus between the different approaches and stronger links between the theories of transition and my research. From the anthropological point of view where transition is seen as a spatio-temporal condition that involves participation in celestial processes, to the feminist approach where transition is seen as part of the deconstruction of the female identity, I will show that there are many similarities in the way theorists from different disciplines approach transition. At this stage, I do not use fully the literature on issues of identity, development or learning because I am primarily interested in work that will help me in the construction of the research hypothesis. The reader should bear in mind that any lack of critique to learning theories or issues pertaining the construction of personal or social identity, is not because I ignore their significance, but because they do not immediately conform to the purpose of the thesis.
Before I continue with the presentation of the body of literature that refers to transition, I must make clear that using different theories that come from different disciplines with application in different contexts, and synthesise them in a way that results in a coherent research hypothesis, is a demanding task. The effort is worth it because it gives me the opportunity to discover more concepts through which to visualise my thoughts and integrate them schematically, by reconstructing a number of theoretical fragments and ideas that appear to be peripheral to transition.