SWG 09: Institutions, Innovation, Impact: Grand Challenges
Organizers: Silvia Dorado (University of Rhode Island), Dror Etzion (McGill University), and Marc J Ventresca (University of Oxford).
This is the first SWG of EGOS Standing Working Group INSTITUTIONS, INNOVATION, IMPACT:
HOW INSTITUTIONAL THEORY MATTERS (2018 - 2021)
Organizers
Joel Gehman | University of Alberta | Canada
Nina Granqvist | Aalto University | Finland
Markus A. Höllerer | WU Vienna & UNSW | Austria & Australia
Silvia Dorado | University of Rhode Island | USA
Description:
Societal reckonings of 21st century urgent problems (climate change adaptation, persistent
poverty, massive (forced) migration) are refocusing how social sciences in general, and
management research, in particular, explores innovations and impact (Dorado & Ventresca,
2013). Scholars have described this class of problems with analytic terms such as 'wicked'
problems' (Rittel & Webber, 1973), 'messes' (Ackoff, 1981), and most recently 'grand
challenges' (Ferraro, Etzion & Gehman, 2015). What are the features of the large-scale
innovations required to address these problems? And, what does 'impact' look like when the
goal is shattering the thick webs of interlinked structures, logics, and attitudes that hamper the
best-intentioned efforts for tackling these problems (Khan, Munir, & Wilmott, 2007)?
In organization studies, these questions invite divergent images depending on whether the
focus is on institutions and concerned with the receptivity of change (see articles in Gehman,
Lounsbury & Greenwood, 2016), or on process and centered on the agentic, situated, and
distributed approaches required (Ferraro, Etzion, & Gehman, 2015; Dorado & Ventresca, 2013).
We invite colleagues to submit research papers that engage concepts and tools from organization
studies, innovation strategy, and institutional analysis. We see at least four promising pathways
for contributions to this track:
- Papers that examine the notion of impact in a manner that is more expansive than direct, often uni-dimensional, operational outcomes. Such work would extend old usages of the word 'institution' (Khan, Munir, & Wilmott, 2007) and engage broad concerns with culture, rationality, social organization and political economy (Weber, 1978). Another source of inspiration would be research on institutional imprinting (Marquis & Tilcsik, 2013) and institutional legacies (Greve and Rao, 2014; Schneiberg, 2007). They also may consider the conceptions of innovation brought forward by economic historians and innovation economists (Geroski, 2003; Hughes, 1993; Lerner, 2012) and recent work with a focus governance and infrastructure as institutional context (Dietz, Ostrom and Stern, 2013).
- Papers exploring indirect, emergent, or otherwise non-deliberate innovations fueled to have impact by factors such as the absorptive capacity of activity fields (Ansari, Wijen, & Gray, 2013), the layering of efforts (Granqvis & Gustafsson, 2016) consequences at different time and space scales (Greve & Rao, 2014; Schneiberg, 2007), and the nature of fields as nested and co-evolving (Lewin & Volberda, 1999; Zietsma, Groenewegen, Logue & Hinings, 2016).
- Papers exploring impact in settings with particularly complex and/or underexplored institutional contexts (Mair, Marti, and Ventresca., 2012). In considering non-Western settings, researchers have embraced concepts such as bottom of the pyramid, resilience, or institutional voids. We invite papers that take on the challenge of further unpacking these concepts (or introducing new ones).
- Method papers with a focus on grand challenges, including provocative research design (multi-level, comparative cases, longitudinal and distributed time frames) and all forms of data and analysis (Vakili & McGahan, 2016; Eisenhardt, Graebner, & Sonenshein, 2016). The point of these methods papers would be to advance our knowledge on the linkages between institutions, innovations and impacts.
References
Ackoff, R. L. (1981). On the use of models in corporate planning. Strategic Management
Journal, 2, 353–359.
Dietz, T., E. Ostrom, and Stern, P.C. (2013). The struggle to govern the commons. Science,
302: 1907-1912.
Dorado, S, & Ventresca, M.J. (2013). "Crescive entrepreneurship in complex social problems:
Institutional conditions for entrepreneurial engagement." Journal of Business Venturing 28.1
(2013): 69-82.
Eisenhardt, K. M., Graebner, M. E., & Sonenshein, S. (2016). Grand challenges and inductive
methods: Rigor without rigor mortis. Academy of Management Journal, 59, 1113–1123.
Ferraro, F., Etzion, D., & Gehman, J. (2015). Tackling grand challenges pragmatically: Robust
action revisited. Organization Studies, 36, 363–390.
Garud, R., & Gehman, J. (2012). Metatheoretical perspectives on sustainability journeys:
Evolutionary, relational and durational." Research Policy 41 (2012): 980–95.
Geroski, P. (2003). The Evolution of New Markets. Oxford University Press.
Granqvist, N., & Gustafsson, R. (2016). Temporal institutional work. Academy of Management
Journal, 59(3), 1009-1035.
Greve, H. R., & Rao, H. (2014). History and the present: Institutional legacies in communities of
organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 34, 27–41.
Hughes, T. P. (1993). Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930. John
Hopkins University Press.
Khan, F. R., Munir, K. A., & Willmott, H. (2007). A dark side of institutional entrepreneurship:
Soccer balls, child labour and postcolonial impoverishment. Organization Studies, 28, 1055–
1077.
Lerner, J. (2012). The Architecture of Innovation: The Economics of Creative Organizations.
Harvard Business Press.
Lewin, A. Y., & Volberda, H. W. (1999). Prolegomena on coevolution: A framework for
research on strategy and new organizational forms. Organization Science, 10, 519–534.
Lukes, S. (2004). Power: A Radical View (2nd edition). London: Palgrave. MacMillan.
Lyneis, J., & Sterman, J. (2016). How to save a leaky ship: Capability traps and the failure of
win-win investments in sustainability and social responsibility. Academy of Management
Discoveries, 2, 7–32.
Mair, J., Marti, I., & Ventresca, M. J. (2012). Building inclusive markets in rural Bangladesh:
How intermediaries work institutional voids. Academy of Management Journal, 55, 819–850.
Marquis, C. & Tilcisk (2013). Imprinting: Toward a multilevel theory. Academy of Management
Annals, 7: 193-243.
Rittel, H. W., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy
Sciences, 4, 155–169.
Schneiberg, M. (2007). What's on the path? Path dependence, organizational diversity and the
problem of institutional change in the US economy, 1900–1950. Socio-Economic Review, 5,
47–80.
Vakili, K., & McGahan, A. M. (2016). Healthcare's grand challenge: Basic science on diseases
that primarily afflict the poor. Academy of Management Journal.
Weber, M. (1978). Basic sociological terms, [action, organization.], Domination and legitimacy,
bureaucracy. Chapters 1, 10 & 11 (pp. 1-62, 941-955, 956-980). In Roth, G. & Wittich, C.
(eds) Economy and Society: An outline of interpretative sociology. Berkeley, CA: UC Press.
Zietsma, C., Groenewegen, P., Logue, D., & Hinings, C. (2016). Field or fields? Building the
scaffolding for cumulation of research on institutional fields. Academy of Management Annals.
--
Silvia Dorado
Associate Professor
University of Rhode Island