The Space Economy (SE) is a timely and important context for advancing research in the Social Issues in Management (SIM) Division. As commercialization accelerates under fragmented governance, the SE brings questions of responsibility, equity, and accountability to the forefront.
For SIM scholars, the SE raises a fundamental question: how can growth in this emerging domain advance society over the long term while using resources responsibly and limiting harm to future generations? The SE is especially compelling because its implications are both social and environmental. On one hand, space-enabled capabilities can contribute to sustainable development on Earth through applications such as disaster monitoring, remote learning, and environmental observation. On the other, space operations generate important concerns around debris, pollution, safety, and uneven access to benefits.
This makes the SE a rich empirical setting for examining core SIM themes such as ethics, justice, CSR, corporate political activity, and public value creation. As privatization deepens, the SE invites research on how firms balance profit with public value, intergenerational equity, and broader responsibilities to stakeholders. It also raises pressing questions of consent, legitimacy, and accountability when private firms shape infrastructure and decisions with geopolitical and societal consequences.
The SE also opens important avenues for SIM research on human rights in global supply chains, governance gaps, and the social implications of commercial human spaceflight, including issues of risk, safety, and responsibility beyond purely technical design. More broadly, it provides a valuable context for considering whether and how commercialization in space can align with more just and sustainable futures.
Our PDW, Space Economy: Consolidating a Research Agenda, invites SIM scholars to engage with these questions and explore how the SE can inform research on responsibility, governance, equity, and the societal consequences of innovation in frontier industries.
📍 PDW at AOM 2026: Space Economy: Consolidating a Research Agenda
🗓 August 1, 2026 | 2:00–5:30 PM
📌 Loews Hotel, Philadelphia, USA
🔗 Register (open until sold out): https://lnkd.in/e3czZT4R
📩 Questions: Mehdi.montakhabi@said.oxford.edu
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Mehdi Montakhabi
Associate Scholar
University of Oxford | Saïd Business School
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