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Societal grand challenges have moved from a marginal concern to a mainstream issue within organization and management theory. How diverse forms of organizing help tackle – or reinforce – grand challenges has become centrally important. In this introductory paper, we take stock of the contributions to the volume on Organizing for Societal Grand Challenges and identify three characteristics of grand challenges that require further scholarly attention: their interconnectedness, fluidity, and paradoxical nature. We also emphasize the need to expand our methodological repertoire and reflect upon our practices as a scholarly community.

We study how one form of wrongdoing behavior – gender-based discrimination – evolved and steadily grew amongst longshoremen over seven decades (from 1947 to 2017), despite changes in the nature of work and technological innovations that made the occupation increasingly accessible to women. Using data collected from 72 interviews with retired and active longshoremen and their employers, supplemented with archival and observational data, we find that although women were permitted into the occupation at the beginning of the period (1947 to the 1960s), they were progressively, completely excluded by male longshore workers. We find that after experiencing imprinting (the idea that early experience exerts a crucial influence on later behavioral phenomena) (Immelmann, 1975) during early decades, longshoremen instrumentalized their fear of occupational decline and voluntarily engaged in organizational wrongdoing by discriminating against women. Men rationalized their exclusion of women through two means: first, by adapting the “Madonna vs temptress” paradigm of framing women, and second by strategically emphasizing self-serving justifications. This study contributes to the literature on gendered work and the difficulty of eliminating imprinted, entrenched behaviors in gendered occupations.

This chapter elucidates how digital citizenship regimes may be rescaling nation-states. In order to shed light on this phenomenon, the chapter introduces and answers three main research questions to unfold the content of this book as follows: (1) How will nation-states in Europe evolve in the aftermath of the emerging digital citizenship regimes? (2) Against the backdrop of the COVID-19, will the urban age reconfigure the technopolitics of European nation-states through new digital citizenship regimes (Moisio, 2018)? (3) And ultimately, will Europe evolve towards a post-national technopolity from a platform of established nation-states headed for a city-regionalised federal network of nations determined voluntarily and democratically through blockchain (Bauböck & Orgad, 2019; Calzada, 2018a, 2022; Calzada & Bustard, 2022; De Filippi & Lavayssiére, 2020; De Filippi, Mann, & Reijers, 2020; Keating, 2017; Keating, Jordana, Marx, & Wouters, 2019; Orgad & Bauböck, 2018)?

In this study, I explore what happens “after incarceration” from the perspective of private prison vendors. Using the experience of women prisoners in California in the aftermath of Brown vs Plata (2011) and Realignment, I trace the rise and growing popularity of carceral rehabilitation programs. Although rehabilitation was once considered an antidote to mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex, it now fuels the growth of private prison companies and provides a stable source of profitability. This analysis suggests the reconfiguration of mass incarceration in the US rather than its dissolution.

The enshrinement of R v Brown within section 71 Domestic Abuse Act 2021 was celebrated by campaign group ‘We Can’t Consent To This’ (WCCTT) as a means of combating the rough sex defence, and as a victory for women. Yet the practical limitations of this codification suggests that there is more to this claimed victory. In this chapter I suggest that the symbolic effect of the codification of Brown underpinned WCCTT’s celebration, as for the first time the legal treatment of sadomasochistic sex (‘SM sex’) became interwoven with, and inflected by, legislation seeking to target abuse. This approach, influenced by the traditions of radical feminism, represents a departure from a liberal legal method and, I argue, forecloses productive legal reform. In affirming the contemporary relevance of Brown, a case infamously mired in homophobia, the legal harm of SM sex is both improperly considered and improperly addressed. Further, by stitching together Brown and the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, the law fails to articulate what distinguishes SM sexual practice and abuse. This analysis does not prevent my agreeing that SM sex poses significant challenges to the operation of justice. To conclude, I propose that an approach which seeks to bolster the competence of the court via education, and that distinguishes breathplay from the otherwise monolithic treatment of SM sex (building on section 70 Domestic Abuse Act 2021) will generate better outcomes for both sexual diversity and those who experience gender-based violence.