At the time when McCarthy began his teaching career, the so-called "functional school of thought" dominated the discipline. The functional school was primarily concerned with asking questions about what are the functions of marketing, what activities does marketing perform, what is the role of marketing within organizations? Much of the theorizing within the functional school focused on the value adding services performed by intermediaries. As the marketing discipline matured, scholars increasingly searched for a more managerial approach that focused on solving the problems and challenges faced by marketing managers. Throughout the 1950s, a number of different approaches to managerial marketing emerged. However, some theorists clung to the functional approach, to the extent that both the functional approach and the managerial approach co-existed for a decade or so.