Using neo-animism to revisit actors for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in S-D logic

To achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a marketing ecosystem composed only of human producers, customers/consumers, and economic stakeholders is inadequate. Instead, foundational rethinking is required. The study ’ s purpose is to analyze some of the constraints inherent in dominant marketing ontologies for reaching the SDGs. One such foundational constraint in the dominant market ontology is human-centricity, ignoring relationships between humans, animals, and other members of the natural biotic community. Neo-animism rejects the culture (humans)-nature dichotomy. We present three contributions that we call ontological enablers to pursue the SDGs. These contributions bridge a neo-animist approach to resource integration and value cocreation in service-dominant (S-D) logic, which entails implications for researchers and managers. Future research avenues elaborate a relational resource integration and cocreation approach between people and diverse members of the entire biotic community.


Introduction
"But it no more makes sense to divide the world ontologically into humans and nature-what is more 'natural' than people…" (Vargo, 2018, 202).
In 2016, the United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda identified 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for governments, societies, firms, and organizations to target to solve environmental and societal challenges, and to improve social well-being.The SDGs are a call for worldwide action to promote prosperity and end poverty while protecting the planet.Social needs are highlighted in the SDGs, such as "education, health, social protection, and job opportunities, while tackling climate change and environmental protection" (United Nations, n.d.).Responding to the call, multiple sustainability-oriented innovation initiatives aim towards achieving the 17 SDGs defined in the UN Agenda 2030 action plan (Trischler et al., 2020).At the same time, the SDGs aim to maintain business profitability, and the SDG blueprint suggests economic growth is the way to end poverty.
In the main, research on marketing and sustainability has not questioned the conventional focus on human producers, consumers, and economic stakeholders nor the mantra of economic growth (Kemper & Ballantine, 2019;Peattie & Belz, 2010).However, despite good intentions (Shapiro et al., 2021), forty years of green/sustainable marketing initiatives show limited apparent positive impact on sustainability.This leads to doubts as to the capability of even wellintentioned corporate efforts to effect necessary change (Jones et al., 2018), as the climate emergency intensifies (Arnould, 2021;Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2021).We suggest that to pursue the SDGs, a model of marketing composed only of human actors is inadequate.Instead, to pursue the SDGs, radical rethinking is required to understand the constraints in human-centric marketing ontologies (Arnould, 2021).In line with this argument, we propose that constraints in the dominant market ontology and the contributions of an alternate ontology should be considered in pursuing SDGs.Thus, this conceptual paper's purpose is to analyze some constraints in dominant marketing ontologies and the contributions of an alternate ontology for pursuing the SDGs.
We use the Theory of Constraints (TOC) (Birkin et al., 2009;Goldratt & Cox, 1984) as a method theory (Jaakkola, 2020).In a conceptual paper, a method theory provides a conceptual framework for studying the focus theory, here marketing ontologies (Jaakkola, 2020;Lukka & Vinnari, 2014).The TOC states that to achieve goals, a causal "chain is no stronger than its weakest link" (Goldratt & Cox, 1984).To examine the "weak links" in dominant market ontologies for pursuing SDGs, we pose the following closely related research questions: 1) What constraints inhere in the dominant market ontologies for pursuing the SDGs? 2) How can neo animist ontology help S-D logic address these constraints in pursuing the SDGs?
In the following, we present the structure of the paper aligned with the steps in the TOC framework.We then discuss the ontologies dominant in marketing and in Service-Dominant Logic (S-D Logic), and show key constraints for pursuing the SDGs.In response to our research questions, our contribution is to propose three ontological enablers focused on the actors in the dominant ontology, alleviating this constraint.

Theory of consraints (TOC) analysis
In this paper the Theory of Constraints (TOC) is used as a method theory to focus on some "weak links" in the dominant market ontology that inhibits pursuit of the SDGs.Market ontology refers to implicit and explicit axioms that subtend the marketing paradigm.We will elaborate market ontology in the next section.Constraint was originally defined in Goldratt (1988, 453) as "anything that limits a system from achieving a higher performance versus its goal".Constraints can be physical, virtual, strategic, managerial, related to policy, or axiomatic mindsets.While originally used in logistics and operations, TOC procedures are also used for thinking through other business processes (Moss, 2002).As constraint(s) limit system performance, identifying constraint(s) offers an opportunity to identify improvements that will improve system performance (Breen et al., 2002).
In this conceptual paper, we address ontological challenges to pursuing the SDGs.Our research questions target the first stage of the TOC analysis, the thought process, and its five steps (amended from Birkin et al., (2009).They are elaborated in the following sections of the paper: (1) Current reality.This step examines market ontologies, why ontologies matter, and compares the current dominant market ontology with the ontology behind S-D logic, and the ontological constraints in pursuing SDGs.(2) Conflict resolution.This step is used to identify what an alternative neo-animist ontology contributes to our understanding of how to pursue the SDGs through S-D logic.(3) Future reality.This is a 'what-if' step.In the discussion section, we identify visions of neo-animist inspired understanding of actors in S-D logic for pursuing the SDGs.(4) Prerequisites.This step identifies ontological enablers for supporting structural changes to pursue the SDGs by way of a neoanimist inspired S-D logic.(5) Transition.This step identifies future research avenues for developing a neo-animist inspired approach in S-D logic for pursuing the SDGs.
This paper addresses the conceptual thought process, the first stage of TOC analysis.The second stage, development of the management tools, and the third stage, application of innovative solutions, are empirical steps beyond the scope of this conceptual paper.

Constraints to the pursuit of the SDGs in the dominant market ontology
The current reality step in TOC answers our first research question, "What constraints inhere in the dominant market ontologies for pursuing the SDGs?"We first discuss the foundations of current market ontologies.From a critical perspective, it seems evident that the dominant marketing ontology adopts a social exchange paradigm as its foundational axiomatic nexus.This assertion derives from classic marketing texts on exchange (Bagozzi, 1978;Hult, 1976;Lambe et al., 2001;Pandya & Dholakia, 1992).This exchange paradigm is closely wedded to Adam Smith's idealized model of market capitalism (Smith, 1776), and therefore of the Dominant Social Paradigm as identified in macromarketing (Kilbourne et al., 1997;Kilbourne et al., 2002).One of Smith's principles is that parties must benefit from every exchange into which they enter.Thus, each transaction should be self-liquidating, and a dyadic exchange model is presumed.It is likewise presumed that actors transact exchange of their own free will, on the assumption that if they do not benefit, they would not engage in exchange.Thus, a subject with the freedom to act is axiomatic, although the model avoids the specification of the resources (i.e., money) that are a precondition to action.A second of Smith's principles is that any individual will choose the alternatives from those available that brings him or her the greatest benefit, usually defined in monetary terms.Social, cultural, future, or other utilities are relegated to a subsidiary role.Third, Smith's model, like modern marketing, rests on a radical separation of exchange from both production (e.g., raw materials extraction) and disposition (e.g., waste).Moreover, exchange is considered as a purely allocative mechanism between (magically) already existing alternatives.Finally, in this model defects in the market system derive not from the system, but from human and institutional inadequacies.Moral transgression lies only in failures to realize the system's progressive potential.
Implicit in the dominant marketing paradigm is what (Descola, 2013) calls a naturalistic ontology and epistemology.Parties to transactions are pre-given human subjects (or their surrogates) who are radically different from other biological entities.Per Max Weber's (Weber, 1930) analysis their actions are calculative and employ instrumental reason; they control their passions.They exhibit persuasion knowledge, which defends them from opportunism (Macdonald & Uncles, 2007).As with their passions, they exert full control over their resources considered as possessions, which they may transmit as they wish.Ideally, their ends should be productive.Thus, consumer sovereignty is already foundational to liberal market ideology (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014;Slater & Tonkiss, 2001).In mainstream marketing, decision-making biases (Bienenstock, 2018) or inadequate responsabilization (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014) impede self-realization on the consumer side (Campbell, 2018).Similarly, on the marketers' side poor marketing intelligence or inadequate application of customer orientation (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004) impede marketing's primary goal, the realization of money profits.Arguing for consideration of stakeholders needs, rather than shareholder or customer needs as in some sustainability marketing reforms (Jones et al., 2018;Kemper & Ballantine, 2019;Peattie & Belz, 2010) does not offer a critique of the dominant exchange paradigm axioms.Thus, despite changes in strategic orientations, e.g., the selling paradigm, the marketing paradigm, customer orientation, relationship marketing, and so on, the foundational axiomatic underpinnings of marketing have remained unchanged.However, there is ample evidence that the idea of endless economic growth is a dangerous myth, and that market capitalism is producing ever greater ecological precarity (Cahen-Fourot, 2020;de Sabata, 1995;Kramer, 2021;Stoner, 2021;Trujillo, 2021); e.g., increasing greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, climate change induced migrations.
To summarize the constraints inherent in the dominant ontology are anthropocentricity and sociocentricity.There is "nothing intrinsic" in the marketing paradigm "to uphold the values of environmental health" A. Helkkula and E.J. Arnould (Sullivan, 2011), nor grounds within this ontology for a revolution in the way we think about the environment (Prothero & Fitchett, 2000).The only actors recognized are people, neither animals nor plants are recognized.The non-human biome is treated as an object, not as a subject.Thus, the dominant market ontology treats the planet as a source of profitnot as an actor or a beneficiary in co-creating prosperity (Trujillo, 2021).Humans individually and collectively, e.g., as corporations and institutions, are applauded as self-interested resource maximizers.Finally, environmental waste is treated as primarily a technical constraint to economic growth addressable through interventions like closed loop manufacturing (Winkler, 2011).

The ontology in S-D logic
Next, in the current reality step of TOC we elaborate S-D logic's ontological specificity and the constraints within it for pursuing the SDGs.Vargo & Lusch (2004) laid out eight foundational premises, which were later expanded to eleven foundational premises, and then condensed to 5 axioms (Vargo & Lusch 2016).The axioms (see Table 1) emphasize service as the foundational ontological premise.Based on these axioms, the narrative of S-D logic postulates that value cocreation is the key driver.Value cocreation takes place through resource integration by multiple actors in a specific context.Contexts are embedded in broader social, cultural, and institutional structures that have a particular socio-historic background (Edvardsson et al., 2011;Wieland et al., 2016).Value is uniquely and phenomenologically (experientially) interpreted by each actor.Value is inherently contextual and meaning laden.Furthermore, as cocreation involves many actors, they might experience value in different ways.Accordingly, cocreated value can be assessed from different value-cocreating actorś (beneficiaries') perspectives (Vargo & Lusch, 2017).
In characterizing actors, S-D logic has criticized the traditional understanding of marketing, which considers producers as value creators, and customers as value users or destroyers in B2C relationships (Plé & Cáceres, 2010).In contrast, in the service ecosystem understanding, actors can be directly or indirectly involved in resource integration and value cocreation (Finsterwalder & Kuppelwieser, 2020).Direct involvement means that an actor is present, such as in a service encounter.Indirect cocreation takes place when the actors do not face each other but cocreate via media or a service, or other actors' cocreative actions, for example Hartmann et al. (2015).With the emphasis on actor-to-actor (A2A) relationships in service ecosystems.S-D logic postulates that buyers are not just objects of selling, they are active actors in the value cocreating service ecosystems.The A2A relationship in S-D logic overcomes the problem of agency contained in the traditional producer-customer binary (Vargo & Lusch, 2008).Therefore, the concept of actor in S-D logic includes many roles and co-creation types, such as institutions, governments, policy makers, manufacturers, producers, wholesalers, retailers, sellers/suppliers/buyers, competitors, customers, and consumers (Corsaro & Mattsson, 2019).When different actors integrate resources and exchange service, they can also constrain each other, for example shared institutions among multiple actors in service ecosystems constrain resource integration (Vargo & Lusch, 2016).Therefore, the concept of actor in S-D logic includes many roles and cocreation types (Corsaro & Mattsson, 2019).
S-D logic does not implicitly close out the biotic community from the conceptualization of actors.Vargo and Lusch (2017) and Vargo (2018b), point out that "things have agency," however, the biotic community has not been explicitly included.For example, Akaka et al. (2021) refers to all actors, such as individuals, firms, customers, families, organizations, etc. S-D logic has understood technology as an operant resource, capable of integrating resources (Akaka & Vargo 2014).Recent research has raised the question whether smart technologies, such as AI, can be understood as actors.Vargo (2018a, 202) refers to Mele et al. (2018): "humans and technology are entangled and, thus, inseparable, except perhaps for analytical purposes, and even then caution should be exercised."Reviewing advances in autonomous technologies, (Storbacka et al., 2016) conclude that combinations of humans, technologies, and organizations should be viewed as actors.However, until now, little attention has been paid in S-D logic to non-human beings as actors.
The recognition of the multiplicity of actors in various research perspectives raises the question of whether members of the biotic community other than humans, could be explicitly included as actors in S-D logic.In this regard, we suggest that the biotic community is not a single actor as in the commonplace reference to "nature," but instead is

Table 1
Axioms in S-D logic (Vargo & Lusch, 2017, 47). A. Helkkula and E.J. Arnould composed of specific living agents active in multiple, situational contexts.In this paper, we propose to understand the biotic community as a generic characterization of non-human living beings, such as animals, insects, and plants.Even air, water, and soil, which are composed of biotic communities of interrelated organisms, may be included.S-D logic has never stated that actors must be human, or indeed that beneficiaries do not include any or all ecosystem actors -human or not.Recently, Vargo (Vargo, 2018a) has critiqued the separation of human from other actors and exclusion of both technology and nature from value co-creation.Science already recognizes social animals and social insects who exchange services and cocreate value.Thus, the axioms of S-D logic may be extended to include other members of the biotic community as actors / beneficiaries who integrate resources, although the current wording of S-D logic axioms does not explicitly envision this.The table shows that the axioms use the generic word beneficiary for an actor in value cocreation.For example, axiom 3 defines social and economic actors are resource integrators.However, as the S-D logic axioms do not explicitly incorporate non-human actors in value cocreation, we argue this constrains S-D logic's potential for pursuit of the SDGs.

Towards an alternative neo-animist ontology for S-D logic
The conflict resolution step in the TOC identifies a solution to a problem.We suggest that a bridging neo-animist ontology can contribute to pursuing the SDGs.Descola (2013) and others (de Castro, 1998;Halbmayer, 2012;Kohn 2013;Rival, 2012;Sprenger, 2021) help us develop a neo-animist ontology.The foundation of neo-animist ontology lies in animist ontology, which is common among globally distributed human populations living primarily through foraging.This way of life dominated most of human history (Sahlins, 1972).On the other hand, neo-animism coalesces at the intersection of deep ecology, ecofeminism, and anthropological studies of ontology (de Castro, 1998;Descola, 2013;Drengson et al., 2011;Oksala, 2018;Salleh, 1984Sprenger, 2021).Neo-animist thought adopts the animist axiom that circulation of resources (information, energy, and materials) is definitional of life.However, neo-animist thought differs in three ways from animist thought.First, unlike animist thought, neo-animist thought does not attribute transcendent forms of being, i.e., souls, to human and non-human actors.Second, neo-animist thinking acknowledges scientific approaches to understanding non-human actors' modes of communication, resource integration, and service exchange.Third, neoanimists accept that some animals and plants are "social beings, endowed with interiority and faculties of understanding" (Descola, 2013, 352), but disagrees with animist thought that animal and plant selves and societies are "similar to those of humans" (Ibid).

Bridging selfhood and actor
Neo-animism agrees that all living beings have selves, although radically different physical bodies produce these selves.Thus, the first foundational difference between the dominant market ontology and neo-animist ontology is that neo-animism rejects the nature-culture (human) dichotomy, and thus axiomatically "flattens" distinctions between humans, animals, and other members of the biotic community.In contrast to economics generally and marketing specifically, neoanimism proposes to bring the interests of animals and other members of the biotic into consideration within relational ecosystems.
Neo-animism has not used the concept actor.Closest to the concept of actor is selfhood, which refers to the capacity to communicate and exchange resources.The more complex selves are, the more they exhibit capacities for intentional communication, resource recycling, integration, and service exchange.Relational cocreation is inherent in neoanimist ideas of selfhood, as selfhood depends on actors displaying the capacity to "be with others, share a place with them, and responsibly engage with them" within local ecosystems (Bird-David, 2006, 43).
Human and other-than-human actors "become themselves through experience, interaction and discourse" (Hill, 2011, 408;Sprenger, 2017).Social acts, especially transitive resource circulation relationships, define an animate being as a person, via a social life emergent from these relationships (Bird-David, 2006;Rival, 2012;Hill, 2011).A neo-animist approach to S-D logic proposes to explicitly emphasize the role of non-humans as actors in ecosystems.

Bridging resource integration and cocreation
The second, perhaps more tricky foundational difference between the dominant market ontology and the neo-animist ontology is understanding of cocreative relationships.The key cocreative relationships within the dominant market ontology are intransitive [non-relational]; in neo-animist ontology the key cocreative relations are transitive [relational].The dominant market ontology presupposes "a hierarchy between terms whose ontological disparity is rendered effective by the action that one exerts upon [the other] within the relationship" (Descola, 2013, 393).In other words, these intransitive relationships in the dominant market ontology produce hierarchically arranged, binary pairs [dyadic relationships] in which the capabilities of first actor is enhanced through their relationship to the second actor in the relationship, e.g., seller/buyer; owner/non-owner; testator/inheritor; patron/client; master/slave; man/woman.Varied systems of intransitive relations of protection (e.g., private property, especially capital, and patriarchy), production (e.g., raw materials extraction and monocrop agriculture), and transmission (e.g., contract, testamentary inheritance, or organized philanthropy) are mediated by markets under market capitalism (Descola, 2013;Slater & Tonkiss, 2001).These intransitive relations in turn inform our ideas of selfhood (e.g., individualism) and organization (e.g, idealizing the competitive firm).
Neo-animism understands resource integration and cocreation as communicative relationships.These transitive communicative relationships ratify and qualify actors, recognizing the others as selves and essential to each actors' selfhood.Underlying these relationships is an "affective value that sustains reciprocity" (Atran & Medin, 2008, 169).Expressed in ethical terminology, these transitive relationships reflect a recognition of subjects' worth and rights to livelihood (Kober, 2013;Muraca, 2016), and not merely as entities' fulfilling roles, functions, and values.Transitive relations are antithetical to utilitarian market logic characteristic of the dominant marketing paradigms, which are limited to notions of utility or the provision of superior market value (Hult, 2011).Further, in animist thought these relationships embed actors with, not in, their 'environments' (Sullivan, 2011).Such a perspective may inspire new work in S-D logic.
For Descola (2013) transitive relations (that is, reversible) include gift giving, exchange, and predation, understood differently than through the lens of individualist, dyadic, and utilitarian presumptions (Wilk, 2010).These transitive relationships, and how they bridge to S-D logic, are briefly explained below.Reimaging economic life in neo-animist terms is not farfetched, as some of our examples suggest.
Gift giving in animist societies, [a type of cocreation] is based on "donor obligation" and "recipient entitlement;" not altruism of course, since altruism entails a hierarchical relation between pre-given, individual subjects (Woodburn, 1998).The norm is not "generosity" but access, specifically the recipient's right to "demand" (Peterson, 1993), and the giver's right to give.Gift giving creates mutual obligation; it creates a mutuality of interests.It is the foundational social contract that organizes community in the absence of the state (Mauss 2016(Mauss /1924; see Vargo & Lusch 2004, p. 6).Thus, animist gift giving couples a norm of equity with a needs-based model of distribution (Wilk, 2010).A specific illustration of animist gifting relationships is community forestry practices in Odisha, India (Singh, 2015), where several thousand villages have collectively protected state-owned forests without formal tenure rights or financial incentives.Another contemporary example is "donor obligation" to progressive taxation, a way of reducing impoverishment in resource endowments within social democratic nations.Animist gift giving is also not inconsistent with some contemporary readings of C2C gift systems (Giesler, 2006;Weinberger & Wallendorf, 2012) and C2C sharing (Eckhardt et al., 2019;Figueiredo & Scaraboto, 2016).
A bridging neo-animist approach to S-D logic identifies "donor obligation" as a type of cocreation.As opposed to the dominant marketing ontology, S-D logic research has not closed out this type of cocreation, e.g. an actor as a citizen (Sundbo & Toivonen, 2011).Indeed, S-D logic has emphasized "positive feedback" instead of profit as a driver in cocreation (Lusch et al., 2010).
Animist exchange [a type of cocreation] contrasts with exchange in modern market economies that is predicated on principles of ownership, production, and transmission (Taylor, 2002).Animist exchange refers to reciprocal resource circulation.Reciprocal exchange entails rights to, but not ownership over persons or things, nor the accumulation of exclusive exchange or use values.In animist exchange, momentary concentrations of resources achieved through adroit relationship management eventually give way to further circulation (Godelier, 1999).Access and temporary control realized through transfer, and which convey both group and individual status and prestige, are privileged over ownership.Thus, animist exchange couples a norm of procedural distribution (i.e., following the rules produces the rewards) with a scalar distribution of rewards (those exerting greater effort are more highly rewarded) (Wilk, 2010).
S-D logic has already explicitly emphasized in its first axiom that "Service is the fundamental basis of exchange" (Vargo & Lusch, 2017).Contemporary examples of something like neo-animist exchange not foreign to modern economic life are trusteeship or guardianship relations which grant access, foster value cocreation, and may also lead to resource transfers.Museums, national parks, world heritage sites are examples.So too are phenomena like the right of public access to the wilderness in many European countries, which includes rights to harvest some forest products (Sténs & Sandström, 2014), and the recycling and repurposing systems that platform economies have fostered (Perren & Kozinets, 2018).A bridging neo-animist approach to S-D logic proposes that in contemporary terms of pursuing SDGs, biotic actors not only serve but should also receive service.
Predation/Symbiosis [a type of cocreation] in animism refers to the belief that for a being to exist, it needs to assimilate elements of a complementary being.In S-D logic terms, we might prefer the term symbiosis for this extreme form of resource integration and value cocreation.In animist societies, predatory transitivity gives rise to the widespread animist practice of asking for and thanking prey for submitting to the hunters' weapons; the return of carcasses to the sea or the forest (Hill, 2011); horticulturalists' anthropomorphic nurturance of food crops; and harvest sacrifices (Godelier, 1999;Rival, 2012).A contemporary example is in forestry, which has now extensively documented scientifically these kinds of symbiotic ecosystem relationships among tree and fungal species, where trees share resources through fungi which in turn, depend upon arboreal root systems for survival (Simard, 2021).Tsing (2015) illustrates such relationships in her work on the relationships between mushroom foragers, secondary growth pine forests, and matsutake mushroom hyphae.A bridging neo-animist approach to S-D logic proposes that in contemporary terms acts of cocreation [predation/symbiosis] aim to ensure that non-human actors continue to realize value in relations with human actors so that they continue to make resources available to human persons.

Bridging non-human signs systems of communication
In the dominant market ontology, communication between persons, whether individuals or organizations, has been understood as fundamental to economic processes.But human communication is based primarily on symbolic exchange; both medium of exchange and objects exchanged being imbued with arbitrary meanings (Baudrillard, 2019).In terms of communicative doing, Western epistemology privileges symbolizing over other beings' semiotic relations (which rely primarily upon indexical and iconic signs), and hence human over non-human communications (Arnould, 2021).Westerners have generally denied, ignored, or marginalized non-human actors' communicative relations (Haraway, 2008).This hierarchical ordering of relationships between humans and other living things results in "othering" non-human actors, thus depriving them of their own unique subjectivities (Muller & Harris, 2021;Stevens et al., 2013).In animist ontology, the entire biome is necessarily semiotic (Kohn, 2013).Necessarily, foraging people recognize and interpret indexical and iconic signs within the biotic community, because it is through indexical and iconic signs that most nonhuman beings communicate.Knowing how to produce, interpret, and even reproduce other beings' indexical and iconic signs, is essential to survival and well-being in foraging communities (Hill, 2011;Rival, 2014;Sprenger, 2016).
Science is increasingly confronted with evidence of complex interspecies information circulation.For example, a crucial aspect for the establishment and maintenance of microbial populations is inter-species communication (Scherlach & Hertweck, 2018).Forest species recognize one another's danger calls (Kohn, 2013).Juvenile trees communicate stress to mature trees via fungal information pathways inducing the latter to send nutrients to the former (Simard, 2021).Biodynamic agriculture, although sometimes freighted with a specious animist spirituality, nonetheless provides an example of efforts to understand and build interspecies cocreation through more than symbolic communication systems (King, 2008;Pigott, 2021).A neo-animist approach to S-D logic proposes to incorporate non-human signs systems into more general theories of communication and resource integration in value cocreating ecosystems.

Discussion
In this paper, we have identified constraints in market ontologies to pursuing the SDGs.Current market practice grounded in an anthropocentric ontology is not sufficient for pursuing the SDGs (Arnould, 2021;von Weizsäcker & Wijkman, 2018).Therefore, ontological bridging is crucial for S-D logic to pursue the SDGs.We present three contributions that we call ontological enablers for S-D logic to pursue the SDGs.These contributions bridge a neo-animist approach to S-D logic with implications for researchers and managers.The contributions respond to the recognition that to tackle the wicked problems of sustainability, sustainability must be theoretically and contextually embedded in an innovative paradigmatic framework (Sebbatu et al., 2020).

Incorporate all living beings in the biotic community as actors in S-D logic
In TOC terms, the weakest link in the dominant market ontology is anthropocentrism and failing to recognize the biotic community as actors.In neo-animist thought, there is no nature-human dichotomy.To overcome this constraint to pursuing the SDGs, the first enabling contribution from neo-animist ontology we propose is a reinterpretation of the actor in the S-D logic framework.By incorporating all living beings and the rest of the biotic community into eco-economic life we can better achieve the SDGs.This is axiomatic for entering into a more balanced relationship between human beings and the rest of the biotic community.
Implications for S-D logic: Recent S-D logic research questions the traditional understanding of markets and calls for new understandings of markets, market emergence, and market shaping.Vargo (2018a) argued a more relational and pluralistic understanding of actors in S-D logic is needed.A key implication of a neo-animist epistemology for S-D logic is that the biotic community, which has not been explicitly integrated in S-D logic, can and should be brought into the scope of S-D logic.Collective market shaping and resource integration by people and other biotic actors can reduce ecosystemic impoverishment, and offer better possibilities for eco-economic productivity as in the biodynamic agriculture movement (Padmavathy & Poyyamoli, 2011).
Managerial implications: The biotic community is a more differentiated concept than the concept of nature, in the same way as the concepts of customers, citizens, providers, and employees are more differentiated than the concept of people.This means firms should examine their value eco-ecosystems and identify the relevant non-human actors in their service ecosystems.They should recognize their resource endowments and service their value cocreation requirements, just as they do with diverse human actors.
Implications for SDGs: We argue that this ontological enabler is a prerequisite to achieving SDG 12, responsible consumption and production, SDG 13, climate action, SDG 14, life below water, and SDG 15, life on land, as well as exemplifying SDG 9, industry and innovation (see Fig. 1 and discussion).

Recognize that resource circulation and value cocreation brings actors into existence, and qualifies them as agents with both rights and obligations
The second ontological enabler we propose from neo-animist ontology is an alternate framing of the roles of the actors of the biotic communities in pursuing the SDGs.Instrumentalizing "nature" as a source of human value as in the ecosystems services literature, subjugates members of the biotic community to the protection, production, control, and calculation logics characteristic of a market economy (Arnould, 2021;Sullivan, 2011).As actors are resource interdependent, resource integration and value cocreation requires communication between actors.Neo-animist ontology understands communication as definitional of all living things in their relationship to other actors whose resources they require or who require resources from them.
Implications for S-D logic: Dialogue has been an essential component of value cocreation in S-D logic (Ballantyne & Varey, 2006).Interaction and sense-making rather than production are the driving forces in value cocreation."In S-D logic, 'service'-using one's resources for another's benefit-captures the essential interaction among actors for value creation" (Vargo, 2018a, 202).Further, Vargo and Lusch (Vargo & Lusch, 2017, 62) have written, "some business practices may be considered ethical or unethical depending upon the institutional framework within which they are nested.Thus, changes in ethical practices may require institutional innovation" to realize the benefits of S-D logic.Reimagining and prioritizing resource integration and cocreation in terms of gifting, exchange, and symbiosis among relevant members of the biotic community within a firm's eco-ecosystem entails institutional and ethical innovation.Considering the rights of non-human actors to the resources necessary for value cocreation, and incorporating feedback from them into decision making, would enable S-D logic to treat non-human actors as "an integral part of the value creation system" (Williams & Aitken, 2011, 442), rather than an "add-on" (Abela & Murphy, 2008).
Managerial implications: We highlight the opportunity to incorporate communication between firms and the rest of the biotic community into eco-economic models.Thus, firms should replace the dominance of nontransitive and hierarchical ordering relations with "nature" for particularizing, transitive (reciprocal and reversible) relations with a diversity of non-human actors (Arnould, 2021;Drengson et al., 2011).Firms should plan and budget feedback from the biotic community into their eco-economic communication models.In elaborating service ecosystem models, the resource integrating roles of non-human beings, the costs they incur, and the benefits they derive from resource recycling and integration in value cocreation, should be made explicit.In this way, systems of resource circulation can "meet the full environmental costs of production and consumption to create a sustainable economy" (Peattie, 2004, 129).
Implications for SDGs: We argue that this ontological enabler is a mechanism for achieving SDG 12, responsible consumption and production, SDG 13, taking climate action, SDG 14, improving life below water, and SDG 15, and improving life on land.This ontological innovation should be incorporated into industry practice as part of SDG 9, industry and innovation.

Neo-animist-inspired understanding of actors in the S-D logic narrative to pursue the SDGs
The third ontological enabler we propose to pursue the SDGs is a neoanimist inspired understanding of actors in S-D logic.This neo-animist inspired understanding of actors in S-D logic envisions a future reality step (the 'what-if') in the TOC.Vargo & Lusch's (2017) proposal that service provision in service ecosystems is intertwined with service of 'natural' systems-ecosystem services-should be seen as more generally applicable.Recognizing all members of the biotic community as actors based on a neo-animist re-reading of ecosystem relationships might foster an eco-economic approach to resource recycling and integration, and value cocreation.This principle replaces economic equilibrium with ecological equilibrium as definitional of systems wellbeing.
The prerequisites component of the 'what if' step in the TOC that identifies enablers for supporting the structural changes are summarized in Fig. 1.We imply that all members of the biotic community are essential actors in the S-D logic framework (not as productive resources to be owned and put to work, or as objects of a hierarchical regime of protection) for resource integration and value cocreation.Combining the three transitive resource circulation, integration, and cocreation processes generates eco-economic productivity just as these processes have done in animist, foraging communities throughout history (de Castro, 1998;Descola, 2013).Value co-created via neo-animist inspired resource circulation and integration processes both enables and constrains the eco-economy in ways that limit resource depletion and favors resource regeneration.This can help reverse systemic resource impoverishment.
In the framework, sensemaking is extended to communicative processes that include the circulation of indexical and iconic signs, as well as the symbols through which humans predominantly communicate.Non-human communication science along with biochemical science increasing provides the tools to achieve this.This expanded sensemaking makes it possible for humans and other actors of the biotic community collectively shape their environments, much as animist peoples have done within the limits of their technology (McKey, 2019;McMichael, 2021).
Implications for S-D logic: From the beginning S-D logic argued that the purpose of marketing is "to provide service to stakeholders" (Vargo & Lusch, 2006, 283).Thus, if non-human actors are recognized as stakeholders with rights and obligations, S-D logic can explicitly incorporate them into marketing logic.In addition, the suggested S-D logic narrative offers a stronger relationship focus by recognizing that all actors "are at the center and are active participants in the exchange process" (Vargo & Lusch, 2004, 12).
To our understanding, no examples of neo-animist inspired, S-D logic approaches to service ecosystem emergence exist.Thus, this paper is the first to formulate this approach to reducing constraints to the emergence of neo-animist inspired, S-D logic approaches to service ecosystem emergence.Throughout the paper, however, we have noted examples of resource integration practices and treatment of non-human members of the biotic community as actors consistent with the bridging model.A program that partially illustrates the model shown in Fig. 1, is World Wildlife Fund's Eat4Change program.Eat4Change strives to engage citizens, particularly youth, to take an active role in society and to change their diets to more plant-based, for the wellbeing of people and the planet.Reducing industrial animal production, increasing sustainable food production, and shortening agricultural value chains are key goals, impacting SDGs 3: Good health and well-being; 12: Responsible consumption and production; 13: Climate action; and 15: Life on land.
1. Collective shaping: This program is an EU funded initiative that enlists multiple WWF country organizations, AISEC, a marketing communications firm, millennials, and academic researchers in a campaign to shift to more sustainable eating habits.The program also recognizes the need for policy and regulator actors to intervene in food systems.2. Resource recycling and integration: The project aims to disseminate new ways of thinking about and acting towards the biotic community that humans rely upon for food.3. Generating: How changing food ways will generate new forms of ecoeconomic productivity among non-human members of the biotic community is not extensively developed in this program.4. Enabling and constraining.Actions 1-3 lead to recognition of new chains of resource recycling and integration and value cocreation.
They lead also to limitations on some types of value cocreation that diminish value for some interested members of the biotic community, such as livestock.5. Reversing systemic impoverishment: The targeted SDGs are implicated in increasing the well-being of people and the biotic community involved in the human food chain.6. Sense-making: The program aims to instill new values and motivations in human actors by identifying deficits in current resource integration and value co-creation practices.
Natural prosperity: The above actions aim for enhanced ecoeconomic prosperity via the targeted SDGs, rather than for short term resource mining and short-term value co-creation.
Managerial implications: We encourage firms to recognize how diverse members of the biotic community are intertwined with value cocreation within their eco-ecosystems.Further, Fig. 1 prescribes that these non-human actors should be compensated (not exploited, nor simply protected) for the simple reason that they must be compensated if they are to continue to provide resources to human actors.
Implications for SDGs: We argue that this ontological enabler is a prerequisite especially for achieving SDG 14, life below water, and SDG 15, life on land as it brings non-human members of the biotic community within the scope of the principles.

Future research avenues
The Transition step envisioned in the TOC will be elaborated via future research for developing a neo-animist approach in S-D logic to pursue the SDGs.These align with UN, government, and the research community's calls for research to pursue the goals of the SDGs, to prevent value-destroying mass species extinctions, more exotic pandemics, and ecosystem collapse (IPBES, 2019;UNEP, 2021).We refer to the S-D logic narrative that bridges neo-animist understandings and the S-D logic axioms (see Fig. 1 above) in our suggestions for future research.While the SDGs cover a wide range of challenges, our suggestions for future research focus on the SDGs concerned with relationships between humans and the biotic community.
Axiom 1: Service is the fundamental basis of exchange.Consider animals and other members of the biotic community as actors in value cocreation: (1) What roles do/could various heretofore neglected members of biotic communities play in resource integration in pursuing specific SDGs?(2) How can non-human beings' actors in service exchanges (gifting, exchange, predation) be recognized, measured, and compensated?
Axiom 2: Value is cocreated by multiple actors, always including the beneficiary.
Support members of the biotic community as beneficiaries in resource integration and value cocreation: (1) What kind of positive value (experiences) do animals and other members of the biotic community gain through value cocreation with people?(2) How can positive value (experiences) of animals and other members of the biotic community be recognized and measured?(3) How does benefit to various biotic communities align with the goals for specific SDGs?
Axiom 3: All social and economic actors are resource integrators.Identify social, economic, and biotic actors as resource integrators: (1) What role do various non-human members of varied biotic communities play in resource integration?(2) What are the essential roles of non-human beings in value cocreation for specific SDGs?
Axiom 4: Value is always uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary.
(1) How can the phenomenological experiences of non-human beings be measured and interpreted?(2) How can positive value be measured and interpreted from the perspective of non-human members of the biotic community?(3) What type of measurements show feedback from the non-human members of the biotic community to one another and to human beings?(4) How can AI facilitate measurements of value for non-human members of the biotic community for specific SDGs?
Axiom 5: Value cocreation is coordinated through actor-generated institutions and institutional arrangements.
S-D logic has recently developed a dynamic systems orientation, recognizing that institutions, complex resource integration systems, and service exchange processes steer value cocreation (Vargo & Lusch, 2017).Value cocreation is similar in natural ecosystems.Thus, we follow Vargo (Vargo 2018a;Vargo & Lusch 2017) who suggests that understanding value cocreation and sustainability requires abandoning the human-nature binary: (1) What institutions, norms, and other heuristics steer value cocreation from the perspective of non-human members of the biotic community?(2) What can we learn from naturally co-occurring biotic "institutions" and institutional arrangements (governance mechanisms) to pursue specific SDGs?
In this paper, we have focused on the implications of the suggested neo-animist approach to S-D logic and service research.We encourage widening perspectives on market ontologies in the so-far sparse streams of service research that have actively discussed SDGs.Overcoming the human vs. non-human division that stems from the dominant market ontologies, can help to solve ecological challenges in pursuing SDGs.Recent research (Kubes & Reinhardt, 2021) identifies neo-animist approach as a possibility to understand interconnectedness between humans and techno-actors, e.g., AI-enabled robots and social bots.For pursuing SDGs, AI-based communication between humans and the biotic community offers new possibilities to bridge non-human signs systems for human understanding.

Conclusion
In response to the global climate emergency and the problem of human inequality, many institutions have contributed to formulating and responding to the UN SDGs.We argue that human-centric bias is a constraint to the further realization of the SDGs.We employ the TOC to suggest a solution to this constraint, and present three contributions that we call ontological enablers for pursuing the SDGs.As our first contribution, we identify the current anthropocentric, naturalist bias embedded in the dominant economic paradigm is a key constraint to realizing the SDGs.Thus, as a solution, we propose incorporating all living beings in the biotic community.The second contribution suggests an alternate neo-animist framing of the roles of the actors in biotic communities in pursuing the SDGs.As our third contribution, drawing on neo-animist theory, we aim to resolve the conflict (step 2 in the TOC) by offering an alternative ontological foundation for the global ecoeconomy.Neo-animist thought can usefully extend S-D logic in formulating innovative approaches to service ecosystems.This will expand the range of beneficiaries of value co-creating eco-economic systems to explicitly include both human and non-human actors in the biotic community.Finally, by proposing directions for further research to better realize these goals, we address the transition component of the future phase to pursue the SDGs.

Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Axiom 1 Fig. 1 .
Fig. 1.A new, bridging neo-animist-inspired understanding of actors in S-D logic to pursue the SDGs.