Research Seminar – Professor Johanna Mair

NOVA School of Business and Economics, Room B133

Nova SBE Research Unit and ERA Chair in Social Innovation invited Professor Johanna Mair, from Hertie School, for a Research Seminar on ‘The Road to Impact: Do we need to reimagine Grand Challenges Research?’. ​

Prof. Johanna Mair, Professor of Organization, Strategy and Leadership, is a Distinguished Fellow at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, Academic Editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review and Co-Director of the Global Innovation for Impact Lab. She serves on the board of foundations and organizations and advises companies, governments, and social impact investors on social innovation.

Her research focuses on how novel organizational forms and institutional arrangements create economic value as well as social impact and the role of innovation in this process. She has published articles in leading academic journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Perspective, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Journal of Business Ethics, Research in Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business Venturing, Long Range Planning, Journal of World Business, Group & Organization Management, and the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal.

Abstract​

Editorial notes in leading management journals have urged scholars to address Grand Challenges (GC) as an opportunity for producing knowledge that matters for society. This review explores whether current conceptualizations of GC support a productive path for management and organizational scholarship by guiding empirical inquiry, facilitating cumulative theory development, and informing practice. We systematically examine scholarly articles, calls for papers, and editorial notes published in management journals for consistency in how researchers use and define the concept of GC and the scope of associated phenomena and attributes. We find three prominent conceptual architectures in use: discursive, family resemblance, and phenomenon driven. The variety and incoherence of current uses of the GC concept and the lack of efforts to improve its analytical competence lead us to suggest its retirement. Instead, we propose building on the enthusiasm around GC research and using GC as a term to define research principles that collectively help align research efforts and improve theoretical development and practice. The principles we propose capture a genuine origin story for management research on GC.

A conversation based on the article ‘The Future of Grand Challenges Research: Retiring a Hopeful Concept and Endorsing Research Principles’ (Christian Seelos, Johanna Mair and Charlotte Traeger)