Broadening our Sight? Evaluating Social Issues in Management Contributions to Grand Challenges

Abstract

To what extent is Social Issues in Management (SIM) scholarship achieving its mission to encourage social change through undertaking research regarding the biggest problems facing global society? This year’s conference theme - 20/20: Broadening our Sight – calls upon management researchers to examine ways of working together and with other stakeholders to enhance our collective capacity to address the 21st century’s most pressing challenges. While social issues in management researchers seem ideally placed to contribute significantly to this agenda, we know very little of the extent and character of contributions by social issues in management scholars to “Grand Challenges”. In this paper, we provide the first comprehensive evaluation of grand challenges as they are examined in social issues in management research. To do this, we systematically review research concerned with grand challenges in 5 leading social issues in management journals, subjecting the full text of the articles identified in our search to content analysis using a structured analytical template. In so doing, we provide a comprehensive overview of social issues in management contributions to grand challenges, reflect on the factors that have inhibited greater engagement with grand challenges, and highlight practical approaches that SIM scholarship could adopt in attempts to broaden our sight.