Grand Societal Challenges Research Articles

Consolidating RRI and Open Science: understanding the potential for transformative change

In European research and innovation policy, Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Open Science (OS) encompass two co-existing sets of ambitions concerning systemic change in the practice of research and innovation. This paper is an exploratory attempt to uncover synergies and differences between RRI and OS, by interrogating what motivates their respective transformative agendas. We offer two storylines that account for the specific contexts and dynamics from which RRI and OS have emerged, which in turn offer entrance points to further unpacking what ‘opening up’ to society means with respect to the transformative change agendas that are implicit in the two agendas. We compare differences regarding the ‘how’ of opening up in light of the ‘why’ to explore common areas of emphasis in both OS and RRI. We argue that while both agendas align with mission-oriented narratives around grand societal challenges, OS tends to emphasize efficiency and technical optimisation over RRI’s emphasis on normative concerns and democracy deficits, and that the two agendas thus contrast in their relative legitimate emphasis on doable outcomes versus desirable outcomes. In our conclusion, we reflect on the future outlook for RRI and OS’ co-existence and uptake, and on what their respective ambitions for transformation might mean for science-society scholars and scholarship.

What Can We Learn from Two Decades of Media Coverage? An Analysis of Public Perceptions of Policy Goal Attainment of the German Renewable Energy Act

Renewable energy technologies have been recognised as a cornerstone in the transition towards low emission energy systems. The German renewable energy act is considered a pioneering support policy whose example was followed by many countries. Relying on recently developed text classification models, we assess 6,645 articles from five Germany-wide newspapers between 2000 and 2017. We analyse how the attainment of the policy goals of environmental sustainability, limiting energy costs, energy security and energy industry performance is covered. We show that once the policy was enacted, industry optimism dominated the agenda. Since 2012, the renewable energy act is increasingly associated with its costs. At the same time, German energy policy was re-framed as the grand societal challenge of the Energiewende that experiences high public approval. If the pattern of shifting policy goal emphasis is faced by adoption policies in general, then public acceptance of long-term transitions might be endangered. We conclude that policies could be designed in a way that new innovative technologies such as batteries or power-to-gas and the optimism created by new technologies rub off onto old renewables to maintain broad public support.

Why Don’t Top Management Journals Publish More Papers on the Big Challenges Facing Humanity?

Our paper analysed approximately 5500 articles published in ‘top-tier’ management journals between 2008 and 2018 to identify the extent to which they engaged with ‘societal grand challenges’ (e.g., critical investigations of wealth/income inequality, global warming, racism, gender inequality, etc.). Only 2.8 per cent did so. The reason why, we argue, is not because management scholars are oblivious to major problems facing societies around the world. For example, the Academy of Management even themed its 2013 conference ‘Capitalism in Question’. We instead examine the relationship between a) practices in contemporary business schools that reduce the likelihood academics will submit ‘critical’ papers and b) journal norms that favour rejecting such papers if submitted. We term this the ‘business school/elite journal gridlock’.

Sustainability-Oriented Innovation with Stakeholders: Achieving System Level Impacts

Given the centrality of innovation to addressing grand societal challenges, this paper uses a Europe wide data set to identify conditions for sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI). Such challenges cannot be resolved by firms alone but rather in collaboration with stakeholders within the innovation process. Using the focus of ‘doing good by doing new things with others’ we connect the often technical orientation of SOI research to a relational account of stakeholder collaboration in innovation. We operationalise different measures to distinguish innovation leading to incremental or system level impact, bringing the latter to an empirical level. The use of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) reveals a causal complexity behind SOI. Our findings identify concrete configurations of firm-stakeholder collaboration associated with incremental and system level impact. We demonstrate the influence of timing and stakeholder selection on the innovation outcome. In this way we contribute to understanding how and when collaborating with stakeholders can bolster the system level impacts of innovations and enlighten the future for organisations and institutions faced with grand societal challenges.

Organizing for the Grand Societal Challenges

Today’s societies face grand challenges, many of them global in scope. They range from environmental climate change and digitalization to ecosystem disruption and dramatic upsurge of socially divisive forces. The scale, difficulty, non-linear dynamics, and complexities of these transition problems are such that no one entity, discipline, or social sector alone can handle - let alone solve - them. The objective of this symposium is to address the question of how firms, in the light of grand challenges, can learn to organize for a social change towards responsible and sustainable management, collaboratively with their stakeholders. There is scholarly evidence of increasing firm levels of responsibility and stakeholder-orientation as well as their performance implications. By contrast, we are only starting to understand how companies can organize to tackle grand societal challenges and how such trends translate into new developments of management theory. This event will give management scholars, who have already taken up this challenge in their research, the chance to share the evolution of their own thinking. In particular, five panel presentations will look at the topic of responsible and sustainable organizing from different, but highly complementary angles, and thus, help develop new theoretical insights. They will also point to - in their view - implications for our work as researchers and teachers.

Broadening our Views of Corporate Social Impact

The notion of social impact has been the subject of considerable interest in multiple literatures. Researchers studying strategy, organization theory, organizational behavior, human resource management, and social issues have long discussed the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a means by which organizations can have a positive impact on their diverse stakeholders, communities, and societies (Adler, 2019; Jones et al., 2016; Mackey, Mackey & Barney, 2007; Marglis & Walsh, 2003; Waddock & Graves, 1997). IB researchers have also acknowledged the role of multinational companies in promoting CSR and achieving social impact (Surroca & Tribo & Zahra, 2013). Similarly, entrepreneurship, technology and operations management and innovation scholars have discussed ways to enhance organizational social impact and improve social welfare (Short, Moss & Lumpkin, 2009; Zahra & Wright, 2016). Thus, to many, organizations (large and small) can be an important force for good that promotes social wealth by addressing grand societal challenges, thereby having a positive social impact. To this end, scholars have highlighted the importance of collaboration between private and public organizations along with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in promoting social welfare (Klein, Mahoney, McGahan & Pitelis, 2013; Luo & Kaul, 2019; Mahoney, McGahan & Pitelis, 2009). From social responsibility to social impact Presenter: Aseem Kaul; U. of Minnesota Presenter: Jiao Luo; U. of Minnesota Public-Private Partnerships in the Public Interest: A Governance Perspective Presenter: Anita McGahan; U. of Toronto Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire Presenter: Rebecca M. Henderson; Harvard U. Broadening Our Views of Corporate Social Impact to Include Conflict & System Capacity Presenter: Witold Jerzy Henisz; U. of Pennsylvania From social entrepreneurship to social impact Presenter: Shaker A. Zahra; U. of Minnesota

Societal Impact at the Nexus of Community and Entrepreneurship: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead

A consensus has emerged around the importance of entrepreneurship to generate societal impact. Yet, there is also increasing recognition of the inability of ventures alone to address the grand societal challenges the world is facing. Attention is shifting to communities as important players in tackling these challenges. For management scholars in general, and entrepreneurship scholars specifically, this calls for a better understanding of the nature of these communities, and the roles they play at the intersection of entrepreneurship and societal impact creation. Yet, community-related research is scattered across the management sciences and lacks a clear framework to guide further inquiry. To address this gap, we conduct a systematic review of the literature published at this intersection in a core set of management, entrepreneurship, and organization sociology journals. Based on this review, we describe how societal impact is generated by entrepreneurial efforts for, in, with, through, and by communities of place, identity, interest, and/or practice, and identify a set of associated roles. Our review identifies trends and omissions in the extant literature, and sets for an evidence-based agenda for future research on the topic. This review yields implications for the field of entrepreneurship, as well as the literature streams on social entrepreneurship, cross-sector collaborations, and community-based entrepreneurship.

Broadening our Sight: Re-Imagining Organizational Theories, Practices & Pedagogies

Many arguments have been proposed in favor of organizational theorists broadening their sights —that it “creates synergies, increased value-added, and positive results for individuals, organizations, society, and the field of management and organizations” (source: http://aom.org/annualmeeting).Yet, as foundational frameworks on managerial agency (behavioral, evolutionary, sensemaking) indicate, the cognitive, affective, and institutional barriers for broadening our sight are profound. Effectively, theorists—just as managers— focus on local opportunities; and, as a consequence, organizational theories, practices, and pedagogies often fall short of addressing societal grand challenges. The proposed symposium showcases contemporary efforts in strategic management and entrepreneurship to address some of these concerns. The symposium features presentations by five scholars [Gino Cattani, Todd Zenger, Saras Sarasvathy, Richard Whittington, and Shubha Patvardhan] focused on broadening the sight on topics core to organizational theories, practices, and pedagogies— innovation, value creation, strategic agency, entrepreneurial education, and corporate oversight. Drawing on extensive conceptual and empirical work on innovators, entrepreneurs, and strategy practitioners, the panelists offer a revised understanding of (i) how innovators evaluate investment in a resource—not only on the basis of its “real option” value but, more importantly, its “shadow option” value [Gino Cattani] (ii) how economic actors operate —not just as “computers” “processing information”; but as “scientists” engaged in “theorizing” [Todd Zenger]; (iii) how strategic agency should be portrayed and practices—not just as oriented to “adapt” to the environment and “boundedly rational;” but as also oriented to “shape” the environment, and capable of “creative rationality” [Shubha Patvardhan]; (iii) how entrepreneurship education should be imparted— as a “method” a la the scientific method to “all”, rather than as an “outcome” of policy focused on “unicorns” [Saras Sarasvathy]; (iv) how corporate oversight can be most effectively accomplished —not just via traditional, “regulatory” mechanisms, but more through “normative” means [Richard Whittington]. Technologies as Shadow Options Presenter: Gino Cattani; New York U. Re-imagining Entrepreneurship Education: Lessons from Effectuation Research Presenter: Saras Sarasvathy; U. of Virginia A Theory-Based View of Entrepreneurship and Resource Formation Presenter: Todd Zenger; U. of Utah, David Eccles School of Business Oversight: The Grand Challenge of Corporate Control Presenter: Richard Whittington; U. of Oxford Creative Rationality Presenter: Shubha Patvardhan; U. of Delaware

Biocatalysis and biomass conversion: enabling a circular economy.

This paper is based on a lecture presented to the Royal Society in London on 24 June 2019. Two of the grand societal and technological challenges of the twenty-first century are the 'greening' of chemicals manufacture and the ongoing transition to a sustainable, carbon neutral economy based on renewable biomass as the raw material, a so-called bio-based economy. These challenges are motivated by the need to eliminate environmental degradation and mitigate climate change. In a bio-based economy, ideally waste biomass, particularly agricultural and forestry residues and food supply chain waste, are converted to liquid fuels, commodity chemicals and biopolymers using clean, catalytic processes. Biocatalysis has the right credentials to achieve this goal. Enzymes are biocompatible, biodegradable and essentially non-hazardous. Additionally, they are derived from inexpensive renewable resources which are readily available and not subject to the large price fluctuations which undermine the long-term commercial viability of scarce precious metal catalysts. Thanks to spectacular advances in molecular biology the landscape of biocatalysis has dramatically changed in the last two decades. Developments in (meta)genomics in combination with 'big data' analysis have revolutionized new enzyme discovery and developments in protein engineering by directed evolution have enabled dramatic improvements in their performance. These developments have their confluence in the bio-based circular economy. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Science to enable the circular economy'.

Low-carbon lock-in? Exploring transformative innovation policy and offshore wind energy pathways in the Netherlands

A new era of transformative and mission-oriented innovation policy has arisen due to the urgency of grand societal challenges, such as climate change. This new era requires a massive restructuring of societies, industries and consumption and will depend on, in part, new technologies and a high degree of coordination between the industry, civil society and government. These new forms of innovation policy may seriously alter classic innovation dynamics. This is indeed the case in offshore wind, in which a specific institutional architecture has led to a rapidly formed dominant design that emerged early in the technology’s development. Radical experimentation, normally expected at the beginning of technological development, only began to emerge after 20 years of diffusion. This trend reverses classic innovation pathways. This paper empirically demonstrates this reversed innovation trend and then proposes a new innovation dynamic founded in a new era of grand societal challenges. It then proceeds to illustrate how The Netherlands has promoted and embedded a rapidly formed dominant design through an analysis of its offshore wind innovation system based on 31 interviews. It concludes that well-positioned incumbents and a specific innovation system architecture have created this trend, a notion applicable to a broader socio-technical system context. A rapidly formed dominant design and quick diffusion are critical to ensuring countries meet their climate pledges, but may risk early lock-in if there is no room for experimentation. We propose that governments ensure sufficient attention to variety and experimentation in innovation systems while maintaining a focus on rapid diffusion.

Coping with Societal Challenges: Lessons for Innovation Policy Governance

Grand societal challenges, such as global warming, can only be adequately dealt with through wide-ranging changes in technology, production and consumption, and ways of life, that is, through innovation. Furthermore, change will involve a variety of sectors or parts of the economy and society, and these change processes must be sufficiently consistent in order to achieve the desired results. This poses huge challenges for policy-making. In this paper, we focus on implications for the governance of innovation policy, i.e., policies influencing a country’s innovation performance. Based on a systemic understanding of innovation and the factors shaping it, the paper highlights the need for effective coordination of policies influencing innovation and what changes in innovation policy governance this may require. To throw further light on how this may be realized, the paper discusses evidence on national innovation policy practice, from Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden, respectively, drawing on the country reviews of innovation policy conducted by the OECD as well as other sources. It is concluded that, for innovation policy to tackle societal challenges effectively, clearer goals and stronger and better coordination among the various actors—both public and private—whose actions matter for innovation performance will be required. Based on the experiences of the three countries, the paper particularly considers the role that comprehensive and inclusive innovation policy councils, with the prime minister in a central role, may play in such a process.

EML webinar overview: Extreme mechanics of soft materials for merging human–machine​ intelligence

Long-term, high-efficacy and highly compatible interfaces between human bodies and machines are critical to both addressing grand societal challenges such as healthcare and answering great scientific questions such as understanding human brain. We propose to understand and exploit soft materials technology – polymers, elastomers, hydrogels and biological tissues with designed properties – to form the interfaces between human bodies and machines. In this Extreme Mechanics Letters (EML) webinar (Zhao, 2020), we discussed the design of soft materials to achieve extreme mechanical properties, which are crucial to forming such long-term, high-efficacy and highly compatible interfaces that can potentially merge humans and machines and their intelligence ultimately. EML Webinar speakers and videos are updated at https://imechanica.org/node/24098.

The COVID-19 Virtual Idea Blitz: Marshaling social entrepreneurship to rapidly respond to urgent grand challenges

In response to societal grand challenges, professors have unique opportunities to effect change, repurposing their expertise to deploy relevant, timely, practical, and research-backed knowledge for the betterment of communities. Drawing on scholarship on postcrisis organizing, entrepreneurial hustle, and social entrepreneurship, we provide a firsthand, real-time case description of a three-day “virtual idea blitz” organized in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The event was organized and executed in less than a week and ultimately involved 200 individuals, including entrepreneurs, coders, medical doctors, venture capitalists, industry professionals, students, and professors from around the world. By the end of the weekend, 21 ideas with corresponding pitches were developed in five thematic areas: health needs, education, small businesses, community, and purchasing. We describe how the community was rapidly rallied, and we discuss the key learning outcomes of this spontaneous entrepreneurial endeavor. We provide evidence from participants and mentors that showcases the value of the time-compressed virtual idea blitz in accelerating social entrepreneurial action. We offer practical guidance to academic, community, and professional institutions that would like to replicate or build upon our approach to stimulate the formation of community and to coordinate efforts to thwart the ongoing threat of COVID-19, as well as other societal challenges that might emerge in the future.

Business and Society Research in Times of the Corona Crisis

No crisis in recent history has shaken the world the way coronavirus has. Starting at the end of 2019 in a province in China, it is poised to reach every corner of the world, if it has not already done so at the time of our writing of this commentary (end of March 2020). The spread of this pandemic in the span of a few months is a clear testament that we now live in a global village that is fully interconnected. As cities, states, and countries are locking down and limiting economic activity to the bare minimum, the costs of this crisis to humans, businesses, and societies are just unfolding. Medical researchers are working overtime to find a cure, and economists are attempting to avert a recession. As coeditors of Business & Society, we watch these developments and wonder: What should business researchers and educators do, if anything, besides shifting and adapting their teaching to an online mode? The role and relevance of business research in addressing any societal concern is difficult to fathom for many of our colleagues conducting research on mainstream business topics, but it is not so for scholars working on topics at the intersection of business and society. If nothing else, this crisis underscores the fundamental premise of our field: the interdependence of business and society (Editorial, 1960). What binds business and society scholars is a central belief that businesses need to consider societal implications of their actions, respond to societal concerns, and play a positive role in society, more broadly. What the current crisis will eventually mean to individuals, businesses, and societies is very uncertain at the time of this writing and may remain so for a long time to come. Yet, everyone is trying to make sense of and respond to the crisis as it evolves. So, it is only natural that we do the same as business and society scholars. In that spirit, we attempt to dwell on what this crisis means for business and society research and what new questions it raises. Our commentary is neither a definitive nor exhaustive coverage of these issues; rather, it is meant to be a conversation starter among business and society scholars, and hopefully among the broader business research community interested in addressing grand societal challenges (George et al., 2016).

Collective action in SCM: a call for activist research

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the current focus of supply chain management (SCM) research; it considers field level and societal constraints and consequently the potential for change. It details the underlying assumptions in the field, considering the dominant paradigms and stakeholders, and how this has shaped the research we have engaged in as a community of scholars.Design/methodology/approachThis is a reflective inquiry that seeks to deconstruct the dominant discourses and paradigms in SCM. It offers alternative avenues of inquiry to “traditional” research, considering how different questions, perspectives and approaches might yield different learning for the field. offering alternative avenues to traditional research.FindingsThis is a call for collective action, for solidarity, for a re-imagining of what research in SCM could look like. Research activism is challenging and potentially risky but necessary for the research community to engage in, particularly in light of the global societal grand challenges. Change can take place in the SCM field through collective action and solidarity. Three levels of activism are explored here – acting to solve the grand challenges, acting to change the field and acting as individuals.Originality/valueThis is a “speak-out” piece, which embraces and encourages reflexivity, new methods of doing and writing research as well as different perspectives, and especially a consideration for context and multiple players in the supply chain. The authors contend that it is urgent to re-appropriate our own agency as SCM researchers.

Shaping the Future: Strategy Making as Artificial Evolution

To investigate how firms engage in forward-looking action, we examined the processes by which a pioneering firm actively influenced the future of its industry over five decades. From our longitudinal field study, we generated a process model of strategy making that helps to explain how firms work to shape the future in some preferred fashion. Specifically, we describe our findings on shaping-oriented forward-looking strategy making in terms of “artificial evolution” processes—interventions by which a firm’s leaders challenge the status quo and leverage the internal ecology of the organization to nudge the evolution of the business landscape toward a preferred direction. This is distinct from the more conventional and commonly invoked natural selection processes that describe how firms adapt to markets or unintentionally shape them. These findings on strategy making as akin to artificial evolution complement and extend the traditional view of strategic management, which has historically focused on processes anchored in models of search and adaptation. Our findings also shed light on an exceptional mode of strategy making—one that goes beyond concerns of firm survival and competitive advantage, and tackles societal grand challenges. By accounting for constructivist, forward-looking dimensions of strategic agency, our findings also contribute to the microfoundations of strategic decision making and to organization theories, more generally.

The lighthouse effect: How successful entrepreneurs influence the sustainability-orientation of entrepreneurial ecosystems

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the United Nations are a call to action for policy-makers around the globe to tackle grand societal challenges. Sustainability start-ups can help meet some of the most pressing challenges. Regions of start-up activity are commonly referred to as entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs), although the share of sustainability start-ups varies markedly from one EE to another. While literature on EEs is abundant, scholarly work on sustainability-oriented EEs, i.e. those with a high share of sustainability start-ups, is still relatively scarce. In particular, there is limited understanding of the reasons why some EEs have a higher share of sustainability start-ups than others. The present paper considers this gap in the literature by contrasting the EEs of Berlin and Lagos, which have very different shares of sustainability start-ups. Forty interviews conducted with founders, investors, hubs and government representatives in both EEs showed that particularly successful start-ups in an EE, so-called lighthouses, play an important role in shaping the cultural, social and material attributes of an EE. This means that the sustainability orientation of these lighthouses is instrumental in creating environments in which sustainability start-ups can flourish. Moreover, lighthouses can attract new talent and resources to a region, which further underlines their role as accelerators of an EE towards sustainability. Overall, the lighthouses are a critical factor in explaining the share of sustainability start-ups. Policy-makers can strengthen this effect by giving access to extra resources and opportunities to promising start-ups and by showcasing their success.

The dawn of an open exploration era: Emergent principles and practices of open science and innovation of university research teams in a digital world

Principles and practices of open science at universities are evolving. Increasing use and application of digital technologies and platforms in research and innovation are pushing universities to take up and develop new visions and principles for how research and innovation are performed. These open science policies and practices (i.e. open data sharing, open access publishing, open repositories, open physical labs, participatory design, and transdisciplinary research platforms) are expanding the ethos of science and innovation at universities. These new principles and practices of open science at universities are also triggering novel open innovation practices by university research teams. Open science and innovation practices hold great potential for accelerating the learning and creation of new knowledge, speeding up the research and innovation process for finding solutions for grand societal challenges, and nurturing the growth of highly innovative and entrepreneurial people. The purpose of this study was to identify emergent principles, practices, and underlying mechanisms of open science and innovation developed and encountered by research teams at universities. The results of this study provide directions for how to advance openness in science at universities and illustrate how openness in innovation is being remodelled by open science practices. Based on our findings, we propose an open exploration policy and a governance model of open science and innovation at universities in the digital world, which aspire to create increased societal value.

A New Perspective to Measuring Employee Growth: Developing a Successful Aging at Work Scale

The aging of the world’s population has become a grand societal challenge, which requires an urgent response from researchers, professionals, and the wider society. One way to respond to this challenge is by supporting individuals in sustaining longer and healthier working lives, that is, age successfully. Although the advantages of promoting and enabling successful aging at work have been widely acknowledged, no single instrument for measuring this construct has been published so far. We develop and test in three consecutive samples a two-dimensional successful aging at work scale. This novel instrument is rooted conceptually in the most recent theoretical developments and is applicable to a variety of work settings and groups of workers. It can be used by both employees and employers for the purposes of individual and organizational development. We also propose directions for future research.

Do the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals matter for social entrepreneurial ventures? A bottom-up perspective

Research on societal grand challenges has become a major theme in management research. Societal grand challenges require joint efforts by private, public, and social sector organizations and are described in the framework of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One major contributor to this framework are social entrepreneurial ventures. Aligning their interventions and indicators with the SDGs can provide them with great benefits such as facilitating resource mobilization and increasing legitimacy among stakeholders. The majority of research on SDGs tends to understand the SDG framework as inherently good, as a powerful compass and narrative to create social value and take action. However, taking-for-granted that social entrepreneurial ventures readily materialize the SDGs seems to neglect the question of whether they accept the framework and how an utilization may differ among them. Drawing on qualitative interviews of 15 social entrepreneurial ventures, we address this gap and identify three distinct types of SDG utilization, namely SDG evangelism, SDG opportunism, and SDG denial. Our study contributes to research on the intersection of social entrepreneurship and societal grand challenges by uncovering the roles of resourcefulness and deviance in SDG utilization. Furthermore, we identify trust between the United Nations and social entrepreneurial ventures as a determinat for SDG utilization and provide several practical implications.