Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Grand challenges, such as climate change, social and economic inequality, forced migration, democratic backsliding, and armed conflict, are embedded within social systems that generate, shape, and perpetuate them (Chatterjee et al., 2023; Jarzabkowski et al., 2019). Their root causes involve interdependent actors and structural dynamics operating across multiple levels (Ferraro et al., 2015; George et al., 2016; Howard-Grenville et al., 2019). Using a game metaphor, grand challenges may be seen as unfolding within a multidimensional maze or entangled landscape—a setting in which players often cannot see the full picture from within, aren’t sure of the rules, and yet must still navigate, respond to constraints, and make strategic moves under conditions of limited visibility. In such contexts, what appears as a single game may in fact consist of multiple overlapping games, each with its own rules, goals, and arenas of play.

Grand challenges thus call for a system change perspective (Mair & Seelos, 2021; Seelos & Mair, 2018)—one that not only seeks to play the game more skillfully, but also seeks to reshape the game. This involves identifying the systemic conditions that give rise to and perpetuate societal problems over time (George et al., 2016; Howard-Grenville & Spengler, 2022), and striving to alter these conditions (Mair & Seelos, 2021). It also entails crafting coordinated responses that cut across jurisdictions, sectors, and temporal horizons (Chatterjee et al., 2023; Hilbolling et al., 2021). Players with divergent interests, belief systems, and normative commitments must act together, which complicates both cooperation and the design of interventions (Gray & Purdy, 2018; Kunc, 2024; Meyer, 2025; van Wijk et al., 2018).

Studying grand challenges from a system change perspective is also complex, requiring attention to both macro-level system dynamics and local specificities (Bansal et al., 2018; Chatterjee et al., 2023). Macro-level approaches—such as those emphasizing the necessity of large-scale structural change and collective action (Ferraro et al., 2015; Grimes & Vogus, 2021), or causal loop diagrams that map feedback loops and structural interdependencies within complex systems (Kunc, 2024)—offer valuable tools for addressing grand challenges. However, these perspectives may risk overlooking what Mair and Seelos (2021) term the “unobservables in social systems”: hidden mechanisms or sources of inertia that are discernible only through embedded, ground-level engagement and trusted relationships with actors directly constitutive of the phenomena. Consequently, interventions devised at higher system levels may inadvertently misread local dynamics, diminishing their effectiveness or even exacerbating existing problems (Bansal et al., 2018). At the same time, attending to multiple scales or levels of analysis risks entanglement in complexity, idiosyncrasy, and conceptual ambiguity regarding system boundaries (Sele et al., 2024). Research designs that couple longitudinal archival data with on-the-ground engagement to follow change-in-the-making in multiple locations may be needed, but are resource-intensive and frequently infeasible for individual scholars or small research teams.

Lastly, the pursuit of theoretical contributions within scholars’ preferred frameworks (e.g., institutional theory, paradox theory), rather than a more phenomenologically driven approach, can lead to fragmented studies speaking in disparate conceptual languages, without sufficient integration, dialogue, or cumulative insight. Consequently, we still lack a systemic view of how, when, and under what conditions organized efforts can catalyze meaningful societal change. 

Our goal is to build an intellectual community that focuses on the convergence of the theoretical and phenomenological riddle of how organized efforts tackle societal challenges, or why stagnation persists. We invite contributions that adopt a multilevel analytical perspective (e.g., Bansal et al., 2018; Chatterjee et al., 2023), attentive to the dynamic interplay among systems, actors, and processes, and grounded in the real-world complexity of societal problems.

We particularly invite empirical or methodological submissions that:

• Unpack the conditions that sustain or reproduce specific grand challenges, and examine the interventions or organizing strategies that seek to disrupt them.

• Investigate how key societal actors position themselves and strategize over time to gain influence and effect change.

• Explore multilevel dynamics, including how actors operate across organizational, field, national, and global levels—observing how agency, meaning-making, and interaction unfold in relation to broader structural conditions.

• Analyze theories of change emerging from different theoretical traditions or empirical cases and examine how they relate to the specific characteristics and underlying mechanisms of societal problems.

• Compare and integrate theoretical frameworks to illuminate how different traditions (e.g., institutional theory, systems theory, conflict studies) contribute to understanding organizing for grand challenges.

• Adopt a process perspective, showing how actors scaffold (Mair et al., 2016) and sequence their efforts over time to enable or accelerate change.

• Propose innovative methodological approaches for studying grand challenges from a system-change perspective, especially those that allow for the tracing of dynamics across levels, time horizons, and actor constellations.

• Propose how playfulness, experimental interactions and spaces (Cartel et al., 2019), and imaginative envisioning of grand challenges (e.g., Palmiano Federer & Hirblinger, 2025) stimulate innovation in addressing grand challenges.
   

We are open to diverse theoretical approaches—including, but not limited to, practice theory, conflict studies, identity, institutional theory, systems theory, and strategy—as long as they help advance our understanding of how organizing for grand challenges can be theorized.
 

• Bansal, P., Kim, A., & Wood, M. O. (2018). Hidden in plain sight: The importance of scale in organizations’ attention to issues. Academy of Management Review, 43(2), 217–241.
• Cartel, M., Boxenbaum E., & Aggeri F. (2019). Just for fun! How experimental spaces stimulate innovation in institutionalized fields. Organization Studies 40(1), 65–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617736937
• Chatterjee, A., Ghosh, A., & Leca, B. (2023). Double weaving: A bottom-up process of connecting locations and scales to mitigate grand challenges. Academy of Management Journal, 66(3), 797–827.
• Ferraro, F., Etzion, D., & Gehman, J. (2015). Tackling grand challenges pragmatically: Robust action revisited. Organization Studies, 36(3), 363–390. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840614563742
• George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. (2016). Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges through management research. Academy of Management Journal, 59(6), 1880–1895.
• Gray, B., & Purdy, J. (2018). Collaborating for our future: Multistakeholder partnerships for solving complex problems. Oxford University Press.
• Grimes, M. G., & Vogus, T. J. (2021). Inconceivable! Possibilistic thinking and the sociocognitive underpinnings of entrepreneurial responses to grand challenges. Organization Theory, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877211005780
• Hilbolling, S., Deken, F., Berends, H., & Tuertscher, P. (2022). Process-based temporal coordination in multiparty collaboration for societal challenges. Strategic Organization, 20(1), 135–163. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476127021992705
• Howard-Grenville, J., Davis, G. F., Dyllick, T., Miller, C. C., Thau, S., & Tsui, A. S. (2019). Sustainable development for a better world: Contributions of leadership, management, and organizations. Academy of Management Discoveries, 5(4), 355–366.
• Howard-Grenville, J., & Spengler, J. (2022). Surfing the grand challenges wave in management scholarship: How did we get here, where are we now, and what’s next? In A. A. Gümüsay, E. Marti, H. Trittin-Ulbrich, & C. Wickert (Eds.), Organizing for societal grand challenges (pp. 17–37). Emerald Publishing.
• Jarzabkowski, P., Bednarek, R., Chalkias, K., & Cacciatori, E. (2019). Exploring inter-organizational paradoxes: Methodological lessons from a study of a grand challenge. Strategic Organization, 17(1), 120–132.
• Kunc, M. (2024). The systems thinking approach to strategic management. Systems, 12(6), 213.
• Mair, J., Wolf, M., & Seelos, C. (2016). Scaffolding: A process of transforming patterns of inequality in small-scale societies. Academy of Management Journal, 59(6), 2021–2044. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2015.0725
• Mair, J., & Seelos, C. (2021). Organizations, social problems, and system change: Invigorating the third mandate of organizational research. Organization Theory, 2(4), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877211054858
• Meyer, R. E. (2025). Wicked crises and the (in)capacity to act. Administrative Science Quarterly, 70(4), 867–883. https://doi.org/10.1177/00018392251363998
• Palmiano Federer, J., & Hirblinger, A. (2025). Introducing patchworked peacemaking: Moving beyond the multitrack-inclusion nexus. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 19(2), 133–153.
• Seelos, C., & Mair, J. (2018). Mastering system change. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 16(4), 35–41.
• Sele, K., Mahringer, C. A., Danner-Schröder, A., Grisold, T., & Renzl, B. (2024). We are all pattern makers! How a flat ontology connects organizational routines and grand challenges. Strategic Organization, 22(3), 530–549.
• van Wijk, J., Zietsma, C., Dorado, S., de Bakker, F. G. A., & Martí, I. (2019). Social innovation: Integrating micro, meso, and macro level insights from institutional theory. Business & Society, 58(5), 887–918. https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650318789104