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 an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2026 The Author(s). Journal of Management Studies published by Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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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