Using review articles to address societal grand challenges

We introduce a special issue of International Journal of Management Reviews that demonstrates how to use review articles to address societal grand challenges—complex, large-scale issues facing humankind, such as climate change, inequality and poverty. First, we argue that review articles possess unique features that make them particularly useful for addressing societal grand challenges. Second, we discuss three distinct but related roles of review articles in addressing societal grand challenges: (1) advancing theoretical knowledge; (2) advancing methodological knowledge; and (3) advancing practical knowledge. We conclude by providing future directions to enhance contributions of review articles for addressing societal grand challenges further by: (a) spanning disciplinary boundaries; (b) engaging practitioners; and (c) using alternative review approaches

We Are Boiling: Management Scholars Speaking Out on COVID-19 and Social Justice

COVID-19 is the most immediate of several crises we face as human beings: crises that expose deeply-rooted matters of social injustice in our societies. Management scholars have not been encouraged to address the role that business, as we conduct it and consider it as scholars, has played in creating the crises and fostering the injustices our crises are laying bare. Contributors to this article draw attention to the way that the pandemic has highlighted long-standing examples of injustice, from inequality to racism, gender, and social discrimination through environmental injustice to migratory workers and modern slaves. They consider the fact that few management scholars have raised their voices in protest, at least partly because of the ideological underpinnings of the discipline, and the fact these need to be challenged

Understanding Interorganizational Learning Based on Social Spaces and Learning Episodes

Different organizational settings have been gaining ground in the world economy, resulting in a proliferation of different forms of strategic alliances that translate into a growth in the number of organizations that have started to deal with interorganizational relationships with different actors. These circumstances reinforce Crossan, Lane, White and Djurfeldt (1995) and Crossan, Mauer and White (2011) in exploring what authors refer to as the fourth, interorganizational, level of learning. These authors, amongst others, suggest that the process of interorganizational learning (IOL) warrants investigation, as its scope of analysis needs widening and deepening. Therefore, this theoretical essay is an attempt to understand IOL as a dynamic process found in interorganizational cooperative relationships that can take place in different structured and unstructured social spaces and that can generate learning episodes. According to this view, IOL is understood as part of an organizational learning continuum and is analyzed within the framework of practical rationality in an approach that is less cognitive and more social-behavioral

Tweeting the Marginalized Voices: A Netnographic Account

Netnographic research allows researchers to study the cultures and behaviour of online communities through a multitude of ways. Still in its nascency, this method allows scholars to mould its techniques to suit the study of a particular online culture and community. Moreover, it opens pathways to study marginalized and oppressed communities that are often difficult to access or navigate in the real world. In our research, we focused on the Dalits, who are at the bottom of the caste system and studied the way they use Twitter to present their perspectives and bring awareness to their experiences. Through this chapter, we present netnography as a viable research method and illustrate it with our experience

Understanding Economic Inequality Through the Lens of Caste

Research on economic inequality has largely focused on understanding the relationship between organizations and inequality but has paid limited attention to the role of institutions in the creation and maintenance of inequality. In this article, we use insights from the caste system—an institution that perpetuates socio-economic inequalities and limits human functions—to elaborate on three elements of economic inequality: uneven dispersions in resource endowments, uneven access to productive resources and opportunities, and uneven rewards to resource contributions. We argue that economic inequalities persist because these three different elements of inequality feed from and reinforce each other. Our study underscores the potential of the caste lens to inform research on economic inequality as well as organizational theory and practice

Impacting practice through IB scholarship: Toy recalls and the product safety crisis

IB research has made significant contributions in understanding MNEs, yet examples of scholarship that have had a demonstrable impact on practice and policy are rare. This article presents research we conducted in the wake of the 2007 global product safety crisis as one such example. We reflect on it to suggest that IB research can enhance its impact by focusing attention on issues that affect both MNEs and societies, and by using available data to arrive at even basic explanations and solutions to inform practice and prompt further academic research