Marketing systems increasingly operate under multiple coexisting theoretical logics—behavioral response, value creation, executional optimization, and dynamic capabilities. Prior research explains outcomes well within each logic but implicitly assumes that local improvements aggregate into system-level gains. We challenge that assumption. We show that optimizing within one theoretical logic systematically generates unintended consequences in others. We define a cross-theoretical effect as a directional, asymmetric influence in which an action optimized within one theoretical logic alters a construct governed by another, typically without being captured by the evaluation system that guided the original decision. Using a source–target perspective, we model how marketing actions originate in a source logic yet produce directed effects on constructs—trust, perceived fairness, coordination—embedded in target logics. We then develop a mechanism linking intensification, cross-theoretical spillover, feedback bias, accumulation, and threshold dynamics, explaining how locally rational decisions determine whether a system remains in adaptive equilibrium — where cross-theoretical effects stay within tolerable bounds — or drifts into system-level instability once those bounds are crossed. Seven propositions specify when cross-theoretical effects intensify, how feedback amplifies them, and why resulting instability emerges abruptly rather than gradually. By shifting the unit of analysis from within-logic optimization to cross-theoretical consequence distribution, this research offers a system-level explanation for why marketing practices that appear locally effective can generate instability over time.
Marwen Ayadi (Sun,) studied this question.