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This chapter addresses the concern that much theory building in organization and management (OM) research suffers from de-contextualization. The authors argue that de-contextualization comes in two main forms: reductionism and grand theory. Whereas reductionism tends to downplay context in favor of individual behavior, grand theory looks at context only in highly abstract ahistorical terms. Such de-contextualization is problematic for at least two reasons. First, the boundary conditions of theories remain unexplored in ways that threaten scientific validity. Second, de-contextualization limits the potential of OM theory to fully understand the role of organizations in society and thereby address societal grand challenges. These claims are exemplified through critical reviews of four fields in OM research – gender, employee voice, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and institutional logics – and counterpoints that may help to overcome de-contextualized research are presented.

Although management scholars have embraced grand challenges research, in many cases, grand challenges have been treated as merely a context for exploring extant theoretical perspectives. By comparison, our approach – robust action – provides a novel theoretical framework for tackling grand challenges. In this invited article, we revisit our 2015 model, clarifying and elaborating its key elements and taking stock of subsequent developments. We then identify three promising directions for future research: scaffolding, future imaginaries, and distributed actorhood. Ultimately, our core message is remarkably simple: robust action strategies – participatory architecture, multivocal inscription and distributed experimentation – jointly provide a means for tackling grand challenges that is well matched to their complexities, uncertainties, and evaluativities.

Environmental justice activism is increasingly globalized, multi-faceted and multi-scaled (Bickerstaff & Agyeman, 2009; Walker, 2009a, 2009b). The existence or perception of injustice triggers the development of social activism in increasingly diverse contexts. The present contribution seeks to assess the explanatory value of resources in understanding activism (Freeman, 1979). In place of justice, the under-studied social movement theory of resource mobilization is explored as a complementary and partly oppositional account of justice activism. The highly controversial anti-GMO movement in France is selected as an invigorating context for evaluating activism. The perceived injustice of lifting restrictions on the importation of GM maize into France inspired the mobilization of a nationwide movement. In sharp contrast to existing literature, ideology is considered as a resource that effectively promotes or hinders social activism. Significant conclusions are developed for environmental justice activism research around emphasizing instability, heterogeneity, cultural sensitivity and above all, the limitations of agency-centric arguments.

This study theorizes about the development of dominant tactics within social movements, as certain tactics within a tactical repertoire are used frequently and imbued with ideological significance. Little research has been done on hierarchies within tactical repertoires, assuming that all tactics within a repertoire are equal. Between 1974 and 2008, the US Religious Right attempted over 200 anti-gay referendums and initiatives to retract or prevent gay rights laws. This research examines how the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement developed campaign tactics to fight these direct democracy measures. This research expands the existing literature on tactical repertoires by theorizing about the mechanisms by which tactics become dominant, namely, their affirmation by victories, responsiveness to countermovement escalation, and involvement of institutionalized social movement organizations to disseminate tactics. This research contradicts existing movement–countermovement literature that suggests that movements do not develop dominant tactics when mobilizing in opposition to a countermovement.

As a site of contestation among job seekers, workers, and managers, the bureaucratic workplace both reproduces and erodes occupational race segregation and racial status hierarchies. Much sociological research has examined the reproduction of racial inequality at work; however, little research has examined how desegregationist forces, including civil rights movement values, enter and permeate bureaucratic workplaces into the broader polity. Our purpose in this chapter is to introduce and typologize what we refer to as “occupational activism,” defined as socially transformative individual and collective action that is conducted and realized through an occupational role or occupational community. We empirically induce and present a typology from our study of the half-century-long, post-mobilization occupational careers of over 60 veterans of the nonviolent Nashville civil rights movement of the early 1960s. The fourfold typology of occupational activism is framed in the “new” sociology of work, which emphasizes the role of worker agency and activism in determining worker life chances, and in the “varieties of activism” perspective, which treats the typology as a coherent regime of activist roles in the dialogical diffusion of civil rights movement values into, within, and out of workplaces. We conclude with a research agenda on how bureaucratic workplaces nurture and stymie occupational activism as a racially desegregationist force at work and in the broader polity.

Even as theorists of social movements have paid increasing attention to culture in mobilization processes, they have conceptualized its role in curiously circumscribed fashion. Culture is often treated as a residual category; that is, invoked to explain what structure does not explain in accounting for movements’ emergence, what instrumental rationality does not explain in accounting for movement groups’ choice of strategies and tactics, and what policy change does not encompass in accounting for movements’ impacts. As a result, culture’s role in creating structural opportunities, in defining what counts as instrumentally rational, and in determining movement impacts within the policy arena as well as outside it has gone largely untheorized. An alternative view of culture focuses on the schemas that guide, and are reproduced in, institutions. Such a perspective makes it possible to identify the conditions in which culture has independent force in shaping identities, interests, and opportunities, and to grasp culture’s simultaneously enabling and constraining dimensions. Drawing on recent empirical studies, I show how this perspective can illuminate neglected dynamics of movement emergence, tactical choice, and movement impacts.

Missing in most of the research on selling has been an examination of the process from the point of view of the customer. When satisfaction in selling has been considered, researchers have focused on the satisfaction of the salesperson with his job and/or the impact of this job satisfaction on performance (e.g. Bluen, Barling & Burns, 1990; Churchill, Ford & Walker, 1979; Pruden & Peterson, 1971). To concentrate on salesperson performance while neglecting customers is to ignore the most important half of the relationship between buyers and sellers and entirely disregards the marketing concept and the streams of research in customer satisfaction. This research takes a different approach and examines customers’ satisfaction with salespeople.

Using data from a multi-method study with a national reproductive justice coalition, this chapter examines the emergence of the US reproductive justice movement. I first examine how reproductive justice emerged in relation to the mainstream women's movements. Then I demonstrate how, due to the relationship between reproductive justice and social identity, the boundaries of the reproductive frame and movements are simultaneously broader and more constrained in meaning than reproductive rights. Finally, I show how (perceived) co-optation leads to tensions between movement sectors and weakens the potential for reproductive justice to reinvigorate activism around reproductive issues. I conclude with how the success of the reproductive justice movement, including around diversity and coalition building, can inform other social movements.