Research

Research on grand challenges in the management literature is vibrant and growing. Given that the term “grand challenges” was first invoked in our field 10 years ago, it is timely to reflect on how we came to this point – and where we might go from here. In this article, we first explore the origins of the concept of grand challenges in order to trace core assumptions and developments and understand how they shape the current conversation about grand challenges in management scholarship. We next convey findings from our review of 161 papers that cite the editorial for a grand challenges special issue (George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016), uncovering four ways in which papers are shaping the conversation on grand challenges. Finally, based on our perspective on how we got here and where we are now, we make several suggestions for what should come next in driving forward research on grand challenges. We urge scholars to go beyond the study of collaboration for tackling grand challenges and shift toward a more critical, yet generative, exploration of their construction, persistence, and unintended consequences. We also call for increased attention to theorizing grand challenges to guide practitioners’ understanding of the nature of the thing they are trying to address. In these ways, we hope to inspire management scholars to leverage expertise on processes – not content per se – that shape how grand challenges manifest and how they may be tackled.

An ethnographic study of grassroots NGOs in refugee camps. Abstract can be sent upon request. Omitted for peer review purposes.

The pursuit of a utopia - an idealized form of organizing - does not end with its implementation. Since those living in a utopia are typically not isolated from outside influence, they are subject to alternative, competing ideas that might undermine the utopia over time. This study investigates how communities sustain utopian models when the broader societal context shifts. It draws on the case of a Mennonite colony in Paraguay. Mennonites are a non-conformist Christian group that seeks to establish ‘pure’ Christian communities, known as colonies. This particular group, which migrated from Europe to Paraguay in 1930, has developed a model of cooperative entrepreneurship, which they believe is the ideal form of commerce for Christians. By combining ethnographic and historical methods, I conduct a longitudinal analysis of the evolution of the ‘cooperative entrepreneurship’ model over a period of 92 years. I adopt an idea-centric perspective, showing how community leaders reframed the idea of cooperative entrepreneurship to make it compatible with global trends. Theoretically, this study contributes to the literature on institutional maintenance, ideologies, and future-making. 

Institutional translation theory emphasizes how ideas and practices travel across highly distinct social contexts, highlighting the translation work required to adapt practices to local specificities. Yet, the literature has directed surprisingly little attention to the experiences of workers doing said translation work, and how their experiences shape institutional translation. This study sheds light on the lived experience of institutional translation through an ethnographic study of MennoAid, an NGO translating entrepreneurial practices from Mennonite colonies into Indigenous communities in rural Paraguay. I build a model of translational overfitting that shows how frustration and perceived pressure to perform can drive translation workers to adapt practices to the 'context-plus-themselves', thus making the successful execution of the practice contingent on their presence. As such, while accompanied adoption is enhanced, autonomous adoption is undermined. This model advances our understanding of institutional translation by showing how adapting ideas to local specificities can sometimes undermine the adoption of said ideas.

Providing good empirical grounding for a claim is essential to high quality research. One way this can be achieved is through data triangulation – combining multiple, qualitatively different data. Yet, while most research claims to engage in triangulation to some degree, it is unclear how it does so concretely, and how such triangulation leads to better empirical grounding. This article provides more guidance on conducting effective triangulation when reasoning with qualitative data. We offer a contingency approach to triangulation based on the challenges associated with rigorous empirical grounding (credibility, completeness, and correct interpretation), and what causes them (data type, source, and temporality). On this basis, we detail three triangulation approaches to address grounding issues - comparing, expanding and contextualizing. This methodological piece provides concrete guidance for triangulation thus shedding light on an often mentioned but rarely explicit approach to conduct rigorous empirical research.

Research on insider social change agents tends to conceive of organizational insiders as tempered radicals, predicting that they ought to eschew disruptive tactics for fear of organizational sanctions. This study unpacks the puzzling case of employee activism at Google from 2011 to 2021, where employee activists unexpectedly escalated from persuasive tactics to confrontational approaches. Adopting the lens of utopian theory, we demonstrate how activists initially idealized Google as a "shining beacon" capable of both profit and positive social impact, operating under a perceived "social contract" where leadership would respond to concerns voiced in appropriately "Googley" ways. However, controversial projects between 2016-2021 triggered what we term "anti-utopian backlash" when activists felt this contract had been betrayed, leading to disruptive tactics like walkouts and whistleblowing. These actions prompted leadership sanctions, further deteriorating relations and culminating in unionization efforts. This research contributes to theory on insider social change agents by reconceptualizing the activist-organization dynamic not as inherently adversarial but as a relationship characterized by idealization, perceived betrayal, and cycles of escalation—revealing how utopian organizational imagination can both inspire and ultimately undermine change efforts from within.