The economies of worth, a theory of moral cognition and coordination by sociologist Luc Boltanski and economist Laurent Thévenot, are increasingly used in organization and management studies. We critically review a broad selection of this literature to assess what has been gained from the interdisciplinary translations of the original theory. We identify in the literature multiple patterns that contribute from different angles to a consistent set of concepts for research at the intersection of organizations, socio‐technological change, and morality. We also indicate theoretical and methodological developments that would further enrich these gains.

The sizeable literature that deploys Boltanski and Thévenot’s (1991, 2006) “economies of worth” model of moral cognition to study organization and management under conditions of uncertainty and value pluralism is connoted by a striking variety of interests, terminology, and theorizing approaches. This review argues for the literature’s emerging cumulative cohesiveness and for its value as a source of concepts and problems for researchers exploring organizational behavior, organizational complexity, knowledge and innovation, organizational justice, and leadership. By mapping the literature onto the elements of the source model, the review induces several constructs that – though requiring integration and development – outline a distinctive conception of organization: the collective exercise of moral sense is necessarily coterminous with decision and policy making; information and formal structures and practices arise out of it, as opposed to forming its context; the core concern of management is the functionality of the socio-material networks in which it unfolds. After defining several integrative and developmental research questions and locating the roots of the literature’s variety in the specificities of the economies of worth’s interdisciplinary translation, the review concludes by proposing a research approach based on four epistemological and methodological shifts that retains the model’s core assumptions but moves beyond its special conceptual confines and uses more general tools.