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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.

We illustrate the potential of diaries for advancing scholarship on organization studies and grand challenges. Writing personal diaries is a time-honored and culturally sanctioned way of animating innermost thoughts and feelings, and embodying experiences through self-talk with famous examples, such as the diaries written by Anne Frank, Andy Warhol, or Thomas Mann. However, the use of diaries has long been neglected in organization studies, despite their historical and societal importance. We illustrate how different forms of analyzing diaries enable a “deep analysis of individuals’ internal processes and practices” (Radcliffe, 2018) which cannot be gleaned from other sources of data such as interviews and observations. Diaries exist in different forms, such as “unsolicited diaries” and “solicited diaries” and have different purposes. We evaluate how analyzing diaries can be a valuable source to illuminate the innermost thoughts and feelings of people at the forefront of grand challenges. To exemplify our arguments, we draw on diaries written by medical professionals working for Doctors Without Borders as part of our empirical research project conducted in extreme contexts. We show the value of unsolicited diaries in revealing people’s thought world that is not apprehensible from other modes of communication, and offer a set of practical guidelines on working with data from diaries. Diaries serve to enrich our methodological toolkit by capturing what people think and feel behind the scenes but may not express nor display in public.

Critiques of elites define populism, which conceives of power relations as a unified, conspiring elite exploiting the good people. Yet, populism itself is inherently elitist, calling for a strong leader to take power and channel the will of the people. Elite theory, surprisingly overlooked in scholarship on populism, can clarify this apparent paradox and elucidate the dimensions of populism and its risk of authoritarianism in new ways. In contrast to populist ideological conceptions of power relations in society, elite theory points to the possibility that several elites with diverging voices and interests exist. Furthermore, elite theorists argue that such elite pluralism is a necessary component of a well-functioning democracy. Much scholarship on populism, often aiming to understand its causes and focussing on Western Europe and North America, points to the similarities of populist movements. The focus on similarities strengthens the understanding of populism as a uniform phenomenon and populist elite critiques as homogeneous. However, broader comparative studies show that different populist movements target a range of various elite groups. Indeed, the empirical reality of populist elite critiques targeting diverse elite groups is more in line with elite theory than populist ideological conceptions of power relations in society. A key to grasping the democratic challenges posed by the power relations between elites and masses in both populist critiques and populist solutions is an understanding of the institutional conditions for elite integration versus elite pluralism. This central discussion in both classical and modern elite theory is applied to analyse populism in this contribution.

Strategy scholars have widely recognized the central role that narratives play in the construction of organizational identities. Moreover, storytelling is an important strategic asset that firms can leverage to inspire employees, excite investors and engage customers' attention. This chapter illustrates how advancements in computational linguistic may offer opportunities to analyze the stylistic elements that make a story more convincing. Specifically, we use a topic model to examine how narrative conventionality influences the performance of 78,758 craftsmen selling their handmade items in the digital marketplace of Etsy. Our findings provide empirical evidence that effective narratives display enough conventional features to align with audience expectations, yet preserve some uniqueness to pique audience interest. By elucidating our approach, we hope to stimulate further research at the interface of style, language and strategy.

Targets set out by state institutions, with respect to supplying water to deprived communities, seem to be idealistic and not realistic. Study envisioned to assess challenges of financing water infrastructure projects, and determines the role of the state towards infrastructure development by holistically planning and engaging with the private sector.

The study adopted a quantitative approach, whereby a questionnaire survey was conducted among different stakeholders involved in water infrastructure projects in South Africa. Data gathered were analysed using percentages, mean item score and standard deviation.

The study revealed that most challenges affecting the success of the financing of water infrastructure projects in South Africa are corruption, hostility towards private participation, cost recovery constraints, high fiscal deficits by state government, unreliable planning and procurement processes, and a rapid increasing number of municipalities that lack technical and administrative capacity to plan implement, operate and maintain water assets.

This research paper investigates projects’ financing challenges with a broad inspection on the role of the public sector. The apparent role of the international structures such as OECD, IMF and World Bank had no influence in the study. From the findings, it is clear that the central government and state institutions lack the necessary resources to accelerate infrastructure development, water infrastructure in particular. The study, thus, recommends a complete expansion and development of state capacity as well as improved collaborations with the private sector to drive the success delivery of services to the public.

Improved and flexible regulations and legislative guidelines are required to ensure that both sectors fulfil their side of the bargain, with an ultimate goal of meeting the predetermined targets of supplying adequate water to the deprived communities.

In North America, the profession known as ‘research management’ elsewhere across the globe, is often known as ‘research administration’ and encompasses the activities and work associated with developing, administering, accounting for and complying with sponsor requirements, guidelines, procedures, and laws relating to externally funded projects. In the United States and Canada, the expansion of respective federal government agencies and programmes was the major factor for the need and growth of the research administration profession. Initially, administrative and business staff often administered research funding, however over the decades, a fully-fledged profession has evolved with distinct specialisations. Both the United States and Canada now have maturing professions and professional societies to organise and advance research administration. This chapter outlines the chronological origins, growth, and professionalisation of research administration in North America, with a focus on the United States and Canada. Mexico has not yet evolved a formalised research administration infrastructure.