Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Organization and management scholars are increasingly concerned with processes and practices of imagining and realizing ‘desirable futures’ (Gümüsay & Reinecke, 2022)—often understood as more equitable and sustainable futures. In the spirit of the overall Colloquium theme, the making of desirable futures aims at rewriting the rules of organizing for individual, organizational, and societal betterment. This interest is salient across interrelated areas of research on future making (Comi et al., 2025; Wenzel et al., 2025), distant futures (Augustine et al., 2019; Hernes & Schultz, 2020), prospective theorizing (Gümüsay & Reinecke, 2024; Muñoz & Dimov, 2023), prescriptive theorizing (Hanisch, 2024), imagination and imaginaries (Beckert, 2021; Rindova & Martins, 2022), as well as path creation and enactment (Feuls et al., 2025; Garud et al., 2010), among others.

Scholarly interest in desirable futures does not emerge by coincidence. In a looming world of ever-more salient crises and large-scale challenges such as social inequality, populism and polarization, as well as climate change, alternative ways forward are more warranted than ever. Yet, while current streams of literature around desirable futures provide meaningful theoretical handles for conceptualizing the production and enactment of such futures, further empirical work is warranted to uncover the various workings of these processes and practices. Notably, the need for more empirical work surfaces the importance of revisiting methodological choices and practices.

Recent research in management and organization studies has made inroads in articulating the diverse situated practices through which organizational actors seek to imagine and materialize desirable futures. For instance, Pettit et al. (2023) showed how future visions are translated into present actions, as organizational actors engage in future-making cycles of imagining and adapting that unfold throughout organizational spaces. Relatedly, Skade (2025) theorized the dialectical tensions inherent in this process, while Thompson and Byrne (2022) examined the texture of practical knowledge implied in the ways in which entrepreneurs imagine and realize desirable futures. In turn, Rauch (2025) showed how United Nations peacekeepers enacted idealized futures through boredom. Other research has revealed how the making of desirable futures becomes a terrain of political contestation, when organizational actors hold different values about what is desirable (Van Elk et al., 2025; Whyte et al., 2026) and engage in power struggles around competing imagined futures (Hungnes et al., 2025).

Importantly, this prior work has offered useful ways for researchers to study, and possibly help enact, desirable futures. However, empirical examinations of processes and practices around desirable futures might reach limits when using methods and data from organizational pasts. Existing work has noted this limitation and begun to provide methodological guidance in this respect. Notably, Gümüsay and Reinecke (2024) conceptualize ‘prospective theorizing’ for desirable futures, that is, theorizing based on an onto-epistemology of imagination (which offers a break from past evidence) and a value-led axiology (which makes implicit values explicit). Along the same lines, Sharma et al. (2022) show how researchers and managers can come together in a project to co-create desirable futures, while Hanisch (2024) proposes ‘interventional’ empirical strategies as one way to move toward ‘prescriptive theorizing’ for desirable futures. Relatedly, Muñoz and Dimov (2023) present a framework for ‘prospective inquiry’ in entrepreneurship theory, showing how the pursuit of theory development can be aligned with entrepreneurs’ focus toward the future. Moving beyond factual inquiry, prospective inquiry extends the focus of research toward the future, enabling “researchers and practitioners to theorize and enact their aspirations for the future” (Muñoz & Dimov, 2023, p. 1; see also Sharma & Bansal, 2020).

This growing body of research provides an important starting point to unpack the empirical work and methodological challenges related to desirable futures. Future research might pursue this direction and revise the underlying ideas based on their enactment. There is also an opportunity to provide a more comprehensive and detailed methodological toolkit that moves the conversation from ideas to use. Hence, future research might explore how desirable futures can be realized by engaging in new and creative methodologies that truly respond to the call for researchers to ‘co-create’ and not only ‘study’ desirable futures.

To this end, future research might experiment with ‘future labs’ as creative spaces where researchers and participants can engage in thought experiments around desirable and plausible futures, for example by using ‘speculative artifacts’ as visual and material prompts to trigger and sustain their imagination (Durante, 2025; Gümüsay & Reinecke, 2022). Related research at the intersection of future studies and speculative design offers methods such as ‘experiential futures’ by which participants can co-create, materialize, and inhabit their imagined futures using multiple media (e.g., images, objects, and performances) and engaging in a wide array of sensorial experiences (Candy & Dunagan, 2017).

Further inspiration might come from various strands of design research (e.g., design anthropology and transition design) that develops participatory and transformative actions aimed at changing the ontological conditions that foreclose the emergence of desirable futures (van Leeuwen et al., 2025) and at empowering individuals in marginalized communities to explore and organize for desirable futures through affect, care, and relationality (Ortega Pallanez, 2025). Furthermore, future design (Saijo, 2025)—an approach originating in the field of economics – might inspire organizational scholars to foster intergenerational solidarity by devising role-playing workshops in which participants assess their decisions from the perspective of future generations looking back at the present.

In this sub-theme, we hope to generate conversations and a community that leverages these opportunities. Below, we describe the areas and questions covered in this sub-theme, and invite papers beyond the listed questions that fall within the broader topic of studying desirable futures.

First, we invite papers that study desirable futures empirically, within and across related areas of research, at any level or across levels of analysis, using methods that provide illustrations, inspiration and new understandings. A few examples of research questions are:

• How are futures “made desirable”, and for whom?

• How do organizational actors navigate the tensions between past and present constraints and imagined desirable futures?

• How can organizational actors take into consideration human as well as non-human actors and future generations when negotiating and realizing desirable futures?

• How do diverse voices and alternative epistemologies reshape collective imagination of desirable futures?

• What organizational conditions enable or constrain the shift from feasibility-focused to possibility-focused future-making?

• How do spatial and place-based contexts shape the imagination and enactment of desirable futures?

• How do different cultural contexts and worldviews shape understandings of what constitutes desirable futures?

Second, we also invite papers that provide methodological guidance on studying and co-creating desirable futures:

• Which empirical strategies can researchers use to capture “imagination-driven” data about futures that do not yet exist?

• What are effective approaches for incorporating values explicitly into research designs when studying desirable futures?

• What is rigor in the emergent, experimental nature of prospective inquiry? How can researchers evaluate the validity of prospective theorizing?

• How can action research be adapted for co-creation of desirable futures with practitioners?

• What are best practices for using narrative, metaphor, visual, and other innovative methods in theorizing about desirable futures?

• What are the ethical responsibilities of researchers engaging in future-making rather than future-studying?

• Augustine, G., Soderstrom, S., Milner, D., & Weber, K. (2019). Constructing a distant future: Imaginaries in geoengineering. Academy of Management Journal, 62(6), 1930–1960. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2018.0059
• Beckert, J. (2021). The firm as an engine of imagination: Organizational prospection and the making of economic futures. Organization Theory, 2(2), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877211005773
• Candy, S., & Dunagan, J. (2017). Designing an experiential scenario: The people who vanished. Futures, 86, 136–153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2016.05.006
• Comi, A., Mosca, L., & Whyte, J. (2025). Future making as emancipatory inquiry: A value-based exploration of desirable futures. Journal of Management Studies, 62(6), 2467–2481. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13227
• Durante, I. (2025). Designing desirable futures through speculative artifacts—Lessons from two global design studios. Research-Technology Management, 68(6), 59–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/08956308.2025.2555146
• Feuls, M., Hernes, T., & Schultz, M. (2025). Putting distant futures into action: How actors sustain a course of action toward distant-future goals through path enactment. Academy of Management Journal, 68(2), 297–325. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2022.0257
• Garud, R., Kumaraswamy, A., & Karnøe, P. (2010). Path dependence or path creation? Journal of Management Studies, 47(4), 760–774. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2009.00914.x
• Gümüsay, A. A., & Reinecke, J. (2022). Researching for desirable futures: From real utopias to imagining alternatives. Journal of Management Studies, 59(1), 236–242. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12709
• Gümüsay, A. A., & Reinecke, J. (2024). Imagining desirable futures: A call for prospective theorizing with speculative rigour. Organization Theory, 5(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877241235939
• Hanisch, M. (2024). Prescriptive theorizing in management research: A new impetus for addressing grand challenges. Journal of Management Studies, 61(4), 1692–1716. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13035
• Hernes, T., & Schultz, M. (2020). Translating the distant into the present: How actors address distant past and future events through situated activity. Organization Theory, 1(1), 1–20.
• Hungnes, T., Hoholm, T., & Clegg, S. (2025). Future-making power: A study of competing imagined futures in healthcare. British Journal of Management, 36(3), 1111–1131.
• Muñoz, P., & Dimov, D. (2023). Facing the future through entrepreneurship theory: A prospective inquiry framework. Journal of Business Venturing, 38(4), Article 106303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2023.106303
• Ortega Pallanez, M. (2025). Resensing visions: A convivial approach to future-making from a Global South context in Hermosillo, Mexico. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 11(4), 433–459. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2025.08.005
• Pettit, K. L., Balogun, J., & Bennett, M. (2023). Transforming visions into actions: Strategic change as a future-making process. Organization Studies, 44(11), 1775–1799. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406231171889
• Rauch, M. (2025). Between war and peace: How boredom shapes the enactment of idealized futures in extreme contexts. Academy of Management Journal, 68(3), 475–506. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2023.0618
• Rindova, V. P., & Martins, L. L. (2022). Futurescapes: Imagination and temporal reorganization in the design of strategic narratives. Strategic Organization, 20(1), 200–224. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476127021989787
• Saijo, T. (2025). Future design: Futurability, presentability, and pastability. Global Sustainability, 8(e47), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2025.10039
• Sharma, G., & Bansal, P. (2020). Cocreating rigorous and relevant knowledge. Academy of Management Journal, 63(2), 386–410.
• Sharma, G., Greco, A., Grewatsch, S., & Bansal, P. (2022). Cocreating forward: How researchers and managers can address problems together. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 21(3), 350–368. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2021.0233
• Skade, L. (2025). The future looks bright: Toward a dialectical understanding of the future in the strategy-making process. Organization Theory, 6(3), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877251377779
• Thompson, N. A., & Byrne, O. (2022). Imagining futures: Theorizing the practical knowledge of future-making. Organization Studies, 43(2), 247–268. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406211053222
• Van Elk, S., Reinecke, J., Trenholm, S., & Ferlie, E. (2025). Constructing promissory futures to defer moral scrutiny: The dilemma of healthcare austerity. Human Relations, 78(8), 995–1029. https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267241265921
• van Leeuwen, G., Singh, A., van Eekelen, B. F., & Keyson, D. (2025). Design anthropology and ontological future making: Transformative action for the emergence of shared futures. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 11(4), 407–432. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2025.08.004
• Wenzel, M., Cabantous, L., & Koch, J. (2025). Future making: Towards a practice perspective. Journal of Management Studies, 62(6), 2426–2451. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13222
• Whyte, J., Mottee, L. K., & Hong, W.-T. (2026). Lacking common ground: Temporally-situated value-systems in an unwanted project. Project Management Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/87569728251400634