Robust Action: Advancing a Distinctive Approach to Grand Challenges

Abstract

Although management scholars have embraced grand challenges research, in many cases, grand challenges have been treated as merely a context for exploring extant theoretical perspectives. By comparison, our approach -robust action -provides a novel theoretical framework for tackling grand challenges. In this invited article, we revisit our 2015 model, clarifying and elaborating its key elements and taking stock of subsequent developments. We then identify three promising directions for future research: scaffolding, future imaginaries, and distributed actorhood. Ultimately, our core message is remarkably simple: robust action strategies -participatory architecture, multivocal inscription and distributed experimentation -jointly provide a means for tackling grand challenges that is well matched to their complexities, uncertainties, and evaluativities.

How Organizing Matters for Societal Grand Challenges

“…Table 1 provides an overview. Ferraro et al (2015, p. 365; see also Gehman et al, 2022) have highlighted three analytical facets of grand challenges: complexity, uncertainty and evaluativeness. Complexity refers to the entanglement of grand challenges with feedback loops and tipping points as well as their nonlinearity.…”

“…Finally, two essays review existing work and outline avenues for future research. Gehman, Etzion and Ferraro (2022) revisit their award-winning paper in Organization Studies (Ferraro et al, 2015). They take their original framework further and refine their argument for robust action as a theoretical framework to engage with grand challenges.…”

Commitment to Grand Challenges in Fluid Forms of Organizing: The Role of Narratives’ Temporality

“…The original aim was to spur interest in "solving" particular problems to generate breakthrough insights within specific disciplines of the natural sciences (George et al, 2016;Howard-Grenville, 2020). Organization and management scholars have begun to focus on grand challenges rather recently (Ferraro, Etzion, & Gehman, 2015;Gehman, Etzion, & Ferraro, 2022;George et al, 2016;Gümüsay, Claus, & Amis, 2020). In contrast to earlier literature, the emergent organizational literature highlights that it is difficult, if not impossible to "solve" grand challenges as if they were mathematical problems with unambiguous solutions.…”

Organizing for Societal Grand Challenges

“…Finally, two essays review existing work and outline avenues for future research. Gehman, Etzion and Ferraro (2022) revisit their award-winning paper in Organization Studies . They take their original framework further and refine their argument for robust action as a theoretical framework to engage with grand challenges.…”

“…The original aim was to spur interest in "solving" particular problems to generate breakthrough insights within specific disciplines of the natural sciences Howard-Grenville, 2020). Organization and management scholars have begun to focus on grand challenges rather recently Gehman, Etzion, & Ferraro, 2022;. In contrast to earlier literature, the emergent organizational literature highlights that it is difficult, if not impossible to "solve" grand challenges as if they were mathematical problems with unambiguous solutions.…”