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Surfing the Grand Challenges Wave in Management Scholarship: How Did We Get Here, Where are We Now, and What's Next?

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Type

Book chapter

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Authors

Howard-Grenville, Jennifer  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3737-0465
Spengler, Jonas 

Abstract

Research on grand challenges in the management literature is vibrant and growing. Given that the term ‘grand challenges’ was first invoked in our field ten 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, & Tihyani, 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 towards 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.

Description

Title

Surfing the Grand Challenges Wave in Management Scholarship: How Did We Get Here, Where are We Now, and What's Next?

Keywords

35 Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services, 3507 Strategy, Management and Organisational Behaviour

Is Part Of

Research in the Sociology of Organizations

Book type

Publisher

Emerald Publishing Limited

ISBN

978-1-83909-826-0