How Not to Turn the Grand Challenges Literature Into a Tower of Babel?

Abstract

The Grand Challenges literature brings under its umbrella a wide variety of disjointed phenomena but runs the risk of reinventing the wheel as well as overlooking incremental progress and past work. To avert this, scholars need to (dis)connect (dis)similar issues, build on past research on these issues, and create opportunities for generalizability through theoretical examinations.

We are all pattern makers! How a flat ontology connects organizational routines and grand challenges

“…We believe this beautifully captures the key argument we are making in this article: when we see the world-and thus, grand challenges-as flat, we can unpack how seemingly mundane actions have far-reaching consequences. Following recent calls encouraging researchers to take on proactive roles in attempts to address grand challenges (Carton et al, 2023;Dorado et al, 2022;Howard-Grenville et al, 2019;Nyberg and Wright, 2022), we now explore how a flat ontology offers new insights around the design and evaluation of interventions to address grand challenges.…”

Traduttore, traditore? Gains and losses from the translation of the economies of worth

“…Recently, the usefulness of the grand challenges concept has been questioned on the grounds of excessive breadth; empirical ambiguity; inconsistency of analytical architectures; and the top-down identification of grand challenges based on specific narratives, theoretical analogies, or ex-ante selection of phenomena (Carton et al, 2023;Seelos et al, 2022). These analytical and empirical problems are being advanced as reasons to 'retire' the concept and replace it with a set of principles for organization and management research, including urgency, broad interdisciplinarity, attention to the impacts of organizations on social systems, realism, and relevance for practice (Seelos et al, 2022).…”

Untaming Grand Challenges Research: Against a De-Politicization of Grand Challenges

“…First, researchers should zoom out from the organizational level to the macro-level of the political economy to consider the relevance of capitalism for understanding and tackling GCs. Doing so, and thus following the call of Carton and colleagues (2023) to uncover the ontological assumptions shared by certain GCs, can shed light on the problematic political-economic coordinates that underlie many GCs and also large parts of GCs research. Only on the basis of such a comprehensive and re-politicized understanding will meaningful research on these challenges be possible.…”

“…Research on Grand Challenges (GCs) is en vogue. As summarized succinctly in another commentary on this topic (Carton et al, 2023), more and more researchers attend to the role of organizations in addressing issues such as climate change or economic inequality. Recognizing the relevance of business in these contexts is laudable.…”

“…Recognizing the relevance of business in these contexts is laudable. However, as outlined by Carton and colleagues (2023), ceremonially invoking GCs harbors the risk of “rainbow washing” limitedly relevant research, selling old wine in new bottles, and silencing existing important contributions.…”