Reconfiguring processes of field emergence : from imprinted practices to grand challenges

The concept of organizational fields occupies a central position in organizational studies and strategy research. A rich array of scholars has studied the emergence of fields bottom-up, through the actions of grassroots activists. Others have called attention to the importance of top-down intervention to preclude framing contests and hasten field emergence, especially in the case of urgent and pressing grand challenges. Still others have focused on dynamics that operate in the wider ecosystem and on how these influence the emergence of fields. This symposium brings together scholarly contributions from all these different points of view to answer the question, How do such dynamics that occur at different levels (micro, macro, ecosystem) interact to influence the emergence and reconfiguration of fields from their origins to their maturation? In particular, what are the limits of bottom-up field emergence and when might top-down intervention be warranted? What are the advantages and disadvantages associated with top-down field emergence especially in the case of grand challenges, and when might such top-down initiatives be challenged or fall apart? Finally, how do dynamics in the wider ecosystem (e.g., norms, biases, developments in adjacent or distant fields) influence a focal field’s emergence and, at times, require its radical reconfiguration