City Research Online

Abstract

This conceptual article argues that the mutual relevance of grand challenges and organization and management studies is best approached phenomenologically. Rather than constituting objects to be observed and theorized, grand challenges structure researchers’ attention and contribute to their interpretations of situated deliberative processes and systems through which collective action is coordinated. From this perspective, grand challenges demand that organization and management researchers innovate in their understanding of such processes and systems and ensure that newly generated knowledge is redirected towards management and policymaking. The article integrates the Carnegie School theory of organization with French pragmatic sociology’s theory of justification, or economies of worth, to develop a phenomenological model of deliberation. This model highlights deliberation’s articulated, evaluative, contestable, and trans-institutional character, and its grounding in the cognitive capacities and social embedding of actors and observers—regardless of the scale, scope, or stratification of underlying coordination problems. Building on this framework, the article advocates that grand-challenge researchers adopt the standpoint of entrepreneurial observers: actors who envision new deliberative processes capable of integrating disjointed systems in situ, thereby extending coordination and redirecting collective action in view of long-range socioeconomic and scientific commitments.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Grattarola, A., Gond, J-P. & Haefliger, S. (2025). Joining Decision-Making, Moral Thinking, and Collective Action: Grand Challenges as a Phenomenology of Deliberation. Journal of Management Studies, to be published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14676486. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.
Publisher Keywords:	Carnegie School, decision-making, economies of worth, grand challenges, morality, phenomenological models
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Departments:	Bayes Business School Bayes Business School > Faculty of Management
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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