Taking on the Challenge: How Organization Theorists Can Address Grand Challenges

Abstract

In a time of increased attention to grand challenges (e.g. Ferraro et al., 2015; George et al., 2016), such as inequality, poverty, climate change, ecological imbalances, and socioeconomic and political crises along with their extended impacts, organization theorists face an important choice. We can continue developing theory in our traditionally existing streams with occasional and peripheral links to grand challenges, such as through bringing those challenges in as part of our empirical contexts, or in our managerial implications. Or we can address head-on the importance of grand challenges, make them a core aspect of our research, and accordingly develop theoretical and empirical approaches that may be seen as a ‘grand challenges turn’ in our field. Several special issues at journals (e.g., AMJ, AMD, Organization Studies) and workshops/organizing themes at conferences (e.g. EGOS) now point to organization theorists engaging with grand challenges. In doing this, organization theorists have received a mix of mild to moderate applause on one hand, and a number of gentle to harsh criticisms on the other hand. We believe it is time to consolidate the early learning from work in this area by having an honest discussion on the most inspiring as well as most contentious issues around such research. Some questions that would guide us in such a discussion include: What are the opportunities and challenges for us as early stage or middle stage organization theorists when we turn our research towards grand challenges? What are the insights and lessons from ongoing and new work in this area? How do we engage with criticism of our work on grand challenges – such as the work not being critical enough, lacking attention to power, lacking reflexivity about our role as researchers, repeating what is well known in other disciplines, and not being helpful enough for having real world impact? How do we enhance our research in the area going forward in light of these critiques? What future opportunities or challenges are we likely to encounter?