Strategizing Together for a Better World: Institutional, Paradox & Practice Theories in Conversation

The United Nations report on progress highlights that: “The current crisis is threatening decades of development gains, [...] further delaying the urgent transition to greener, more inclusive economies, and throwing progress on the SDGs even further off track” (United Nations 2021). While it is positive that management scholars have been shifting their research towards societal challenges, there is a need to continue and increase our research on these topics and provide new insights as well as work collectively on these complex problems. Therefore, this panel symposium hosts leading scholars from different theoretical backgrounds to explore strategies in response to societal challenges and to discuss how future research could make theoretically insightful and practically relevant contributions. We bring institutional (Ansari, Wijen, & Gray, 2013; Rauch & Ansari, 2021), paradox (Van der Byl, Slawinski, & Hahn, 2020), and practice theories (Joutsenvirta & Vaara, 2015; Piekkari, Tietze, Angouri, Meyer, & Vaara, 2021) into conversation with each other because we believe that these different theories may together contribute to the creation of a better world. Together, we will reflect on the similarities and complementarities of selected lenses to gain insights on two questions: 1) How have these lenses enabled researchers to provide different valuable insights on strategies in response to societal challenges? How can these lenses be combined in future research to develop new theories on promising strategies in response to societal challenges that are insightful and relevant? We will discuss these and further questions with our invited panelists.