Business and Management INK

When Grand Challenges Literature Becomes the Tower of Babel

June 6, 2023 982

Guillaume Carton, Julia Parigot, and Thomas Roulet reflect on their article, “How Not to Turn the Grand Challenges Literature Into a Tower of Babel?,” which was recently published in Business & Society. Their responses appear below the paper’s abstract.

The Grand Challenges literature brings under its umbrella a wide variety of disjointed phenomena but runs the risk of reinventing the wheel as well as overlooking incremental progress and past work. To avert this, scholars need to (dis)connect (dis)similar issues, build on past research on these issues, and create opportunities for generalizability through theoretical examinations.

What motivated you to pursue this research?

This Business & Society commentary grew out of our questioning of the management community’s sudden interest in Grand Challenges. While we were initially seduced by the topic because we thought it would help us strengthen our arguments and be heard by a community of scholars who also care about business and society, we quickly became confused by it and got the impression that we were reinventing the wheel. Building on the concept of academic fashion, we then wrote this commentary to avoid the current risks of turning the Grand Challenges literature into a Tower of Babel and to move towards consolidated perspectives and solutions to Grand Challenges.

What advice would you give to new scholars and incoming researchers in this particular field of study?

Headshots of Guillaume Carton, Julia Parigot, and Thomas Roulet.
From left to right: Guillaume Carton, Julia Parigot, and Thomas Roulet

As we argue in this commentary that Grand Challenges have become an academic fashion, we want to warn new scholars and incoming researchers about the risks of jumping on the Grand Challenges bandwagon. Like a Ponzi scheme, academic fashions promise very high returns with little or no risk. However, because academic fashions tend to fade as soon as they are widely adopted, by investing in the Grand Challenges literature, new scholars and incoming researchers risk not being able to publish in this literature once well-known management scholars have jumped on a new fashion.

Guillaume Carton is an associate professor of strategy at emlyon business school, France. His research interests focus on top strategic leadership, management knowledge, and sustainability transition. Julia Parigot is an associate professor of strategy at Institut Supérieur de Gestion, France. Her research interests focus on natural resource management and sustainability transition. Thomas Roulet is an associate professor in organization theory at the University of Cambridge, Judge Business School & King’s College. His research focuses on stakeholder and institutional theories in the context of social evaluations.

View all posts by Guillaume Carton, Julia Parigot, and Thomas Roulet

Related Articles

The Role of Place in Sustainability
Business and Management INK
October 28, 2024

The Role of Place in Sustainability

Read Now
Turning to Glitter in Management Studies – Why We Should Take ‘Unserious’ Glitter Serious to Understand New Management Practices
Business and Management INK
October 24, 2024

Turning to Glitter in Management Studies – Why We Should Take ‘Unserious’ Glitter Serious to Understand New Management Practices

Read Now
Alondra Nelson Named to U.S. National Science Board
Announcements
October 18, 2024

Alondra Nelson Named to U.S. National Science Board

Read Now
Lee Miller: Ethics, photography and ethnography
News
September 30, 2024

Lee Miller: Ethics, photography and ethnography

Read Now
‘Settler Colonialism’ and the Promised Land

‘Settler Colonialism’ and the Promised Land

The term ‘settler colonialism’ was coined by an Australian historian in the 1960s to describe the occupation of a territory with a […]

Read Now
Utilizing Academic-Practitioner Partnering for Societal Impact

Utilizing Academic-Practitioner Partnering for Societal Impact

In this article, co-authors Natalie Slawinski, Bruna Brito, Jennifer Brenton, and Wendy Smith reflect on the inspiration behind their research article, “Reflections on deep academic–practitioner partnering for generative societal impact,” published in Strategic Organization.

Read Now
Trippin’ Forward: Management Research and the Development of Psychedelics

Trippin’ Forward: Management Research and the Development of Psychedelics

Charlie Smith reflects on his interest in psychedelic research, the topic of his research article, “Psychedelics, Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy and Employees’ Wellbeing,” published in Journal of Management Inquiry.

Read Now
0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

0 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments