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While many approaches in the field of unlearning aim at describing, understanding or explaining the “what” and/or “how” of unlearning, this paper aims to focus on the “where-to” and the goal of unlearning. In many cases, unlearning starts off with a specific result or goal in mind. This paper suggests that such an approach has to be challenged in the context of a highly complex and uncertain world and to introduce a mode of unlearning following a strategy of future-oriented open-endedness.

This conceptual paper draws on (both theoretical/philosophical and empirical) interdisciplinary evidence from a wide variety of fields, such as organization studies, organizational (un)learning, systems theory, cognitive science and innovation studies.

It turns out that open-endedness in unlearning processes plays a central role, especially if we are confronted with high levels of uncertainty and complexity. In such an environment, following a strategy of co-becoming with an unfolding environment and with an emergent goal seems to be more promising than aiming at a preconceived (un-)learning goal.

The unlearning literature provides various approaches to what unlearning is and how it can be executed. However, understanding the actual goals and outcomes of unlearning and how these goals are identified and determined is a rather under-researched field. In many cases, they are preconceived in advance finding their realization in new forms of knowledge, assumptions, belief systems, values or routines. This paper challenges this strategy and addresses the gap of how it is possible to unlearn toward an uncertain future. This has an impact on the process of unlearning itself; it has to be reframed and understood as an open-ended strategy for identifying emerging future potentials, purposes and goals in a process of co-becoming with an unfolding future.

The purpose of this paper is to present a framework of ideation pathways that organically extend the current stock of knowledge to generate new and useful knowledge. Although detailed, granular guidance is available in the strategy literature on all aspects of empirically testing theory, the other key aspect of theory development – theory generation – remains relatively neglected. The framework developed in this paper addresses this gap by proposing pathways for how new theory can be generated.

Grounded in two foundational principles in epistemology, the Genetic Argument and the open-endedness of knowledge, I offer a framework of distinct pathways that systematically lead to the creation of new knowledge.

Existing knowledge can be deepened (through introspection), broadened (through leverage) and rejuvenated (through innovation). These ideation pathways can unlock the vast, hidden potential of current knowledge in strategy.

The novelty and doability of the framework can potentially inspire research on a broad, community-wide basis, engaging PhD students and management faculty, improving knowledge, democratizing scholarship and deepening the societal footprint of strategy research.

Knowledge is open-ended. The more we know, the more we appreciate how much we don’t know. But the lack of clear guidance on rigorous pathways along which new knowledge that advances both theory and practice can be created from prior knowledge has stymied strategy research. The paper’s framework systematically pulls together for the first time the disparate elements of transforming past learning into new knowledge in a coherent epistemological whole.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the aptness of “information literacy”, conceptualized as a socially contextualized phenomenon, for analyses of interdisciplinary scholarly communication.

The paper presents a conceptual analysis. Two influential representatives of the social turn in the information literacy literature are taken as starting points: Annemaree Lloyd’s conceptualization of “information literacy practice”, and Jack Andersen’s conceptualization of information literacy as “genre knowledge”. Their positioning of information literacy as a socially contextualized phenomenon – by use of practice theories and rhetorical genre theory, respectively, – is analysed against an illustrative example of interdisciplinary scholarly communication.

Conceptualizations by Lloyd and Andersen explain information literacy as socially contextualized in terms of stable norms and understandings shared in social communities. Their concepts have the potential of explaining changes and innovations in social practices including scholarly communication. If we combine genre-theoretical and practice-theoretical concepts – and accentuate the open-endedness of social practices and of genres – we can enhance the understanding of information literacy in settings of interdisciplinary scholarly communication where the actors involved lack shared conventions and assumptions.

The paper suggests that the fluid features of social contexts should be accounted for in the information literacy literature. By combining genre-theoretical and practice-theoretical concepts in a novel way it offers such an account. It provides a useful framework for understanding the phenomenon of information literacy in interdisciplinary scholarly communication.

Appreciative inquiry is an approach to action research that intends to create knowledge for social innovation. Such knowledge has the generative capacity to interrupt habitual practice and to create an inspiring sense of possibility that energizes novel action. How can appreciative inquiry live up to this promise? The premise of this chapter is that we need to better understand the generative qualities of inquiry in the appreciative/inquiry equation. What is the nature of inquiry that has generativity at its core? The chapter describes five distinct, yet interrelated approaches that enhance the generative process of inquiry. They depict generativity as a dynamic interplay of open-endedness and connectedness. How can the five dimensions of generativity advance appreciative inquiry as a scholarship of transformation? The last section of the chapter gives some suggestions for such possible enrichment. We need audacious forms of scholarship for the creation of a more just and sustainable global society. Appreciative inquiry as a generative process is well positioned to take on that role.

This introduction to the Symposium “Curiosity, Imagination, and Surprise” discusses some of the characteristics of Mary Morgan’s approach to study science, which she labels as “naturalized philosophy of science.” One of these characteristics is the usage of a carefully chosen vocabulary. These concepts are usually unconventional and open-ended with the aim of illuminating the practice under study. Another characteristic of her approach is that it is curiosity-driven, which becomes clear by the kind of typical questions she asks. A third characteristic is that her approach is case-study based, with its typical features, such as the investigation of a bounded “real-life” whole, its attitude of open-endedness, the usage of multiple research methods and its complex, often-narrated outcome.

Drawing on close readings of Schatzki and Friedland, this paper explores the nexus of practice, logics, and values, and especially the implications of practice-driven institutionalism for the concept of values and vice versa. In essence, the article searches for values in practice-driven institutionalism and articulates how they might be found, deploying practice theory, institutional logics, and values work as guides. The article’s core argument is that both practice theory and institutional logics ascribe an important conceptual role to values, but neither has developed a theory of values that is wholly compatible with the onto-epistemological commitments of practice-driven institutionalism. The article introduces burgeoning scholarship on values work and argues that this approach offers a bridge between practice theory and institutional theory and, by extension, provides conceptual resources and an important research lacuna for those interested in practice-driven institutionalism.

Responding to the knowledge needs of stakeholders has been a defining feature of higher education research. However important responsiveness is, it does not automatically assume beneficial change of policy or practice as a result. When research generates impact beyond the academy, little is known about its epistemic, organisational and temporal characteristics and their links. Are these knowledge characteristics a typical reflection of the field or do they have a certain specificity that may account for their reach into the wider spheres of policy and practice and society at large? In this chapter, we look at the knowledge characteristics of higher education research that was submitted for the ‘impact’ element of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) – the United Kingdom's national level assessment of research. We identified 53 impact case studies within a broadly defined and multidisciplinary field of higher education research. We investigate the theories and methodologies used, the researchers and institutions that conducted the research, its sponsors and the timescales of the various research projects. In the United Kingdom, the REF includes assessment of nonacademic impact. The latter has emerged as a key criterion and a metric for evaluating and funding academic research. We contribute a sociological conceptualisation of the knowledge characteristics and their links as an ‘epistemic-organisational-temporal nexus’ at which actors' interests intersect. This conceptual framework advances our understanding of the investigated multidisciplinary research field, with relevance to applied social sciences generally.

The aim of this paper is to expand the scant literature related to retail branding ideology and the application of mythotypes to flagship stores within the Chinese setting. The study explores the transplantation of a retail brand ideology in the form of complex home‐country cultural content to a host culture whose local retail narratives differ significantly from those of the brand enterprise.

This is an ethnographic study that spans the two years of the focal store's existence. With the help of native‐speaking graduate assistants, store visits, interviews with Chinese locals and internet mentions and secondary information were collected. Data include fieldnotes, interview transcripts, photographs, news articles, blog comments and website information.

The paper details the mythotypic mistuning of marketscape and mindscape that contributed to the failure of this flagship store and build theory concerning the implementation of retail brand ideology and retail theatrics. The paper concludes that successful themed flagship brand stores encapsulate ideology in stories composed of mythotypes and encourages the enactment of that ideology through multiple, interrelated brand experiences. Misalignments of these mythotypes can impede the acceptance of retail brand ideology and the diffusion of the retail theatre concept.

While foreign and domestic flagship brand stores have flourished in China, cultural propriety of these stores includes a host of physical design cues that must mesh with the local culture's sensibilities and the brand's provenance. To translate the retail brand ideology into customer‐centric meaning is challenging. The presence or absence of mythotypes comprising the servicescape profoundly affect their success.

In an ever-complexifying business context, organizations need to continuously adapt, adjust and change their routines in order to remain competitive. Drawing upon a qualitative study focusing on three Southeastern European countries (Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia), this paper explores the role played by managerial feedback on routine change within small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The authors draw from an in-depth qualitative study of six manufacturing SMEs located in three Southeastern European countries: Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. The process of data collection, which spanned over a period of fifteen months, was centred around both interviews and observations.

The authors argue that feedback is a powerful and constructive managerial practice that sets to initiate changes in routines through three different means: (1) making sense of the changes required (by channelling information), (2) rationalizing the decision for changing the unproductive routines and (3) reviewing the process of change through the legitimization of situational routines. In addition to this, the authors found that managers perceive that routines need to change for four main reasons: inability to meet targets (e.g. performance); too cumbersome to deal with complex environments; inflexibility and failing to provide control; obsolete in terms of providing a sense of confidence.

This research provides evidence that feedback is an important managerial means of changing routines in informal, less bureaucratic and less formalized workplaces such as SMEs. Managers might embrace deformalized approaches to feedback when dealing with routines in SMEs. Working within a very sensitive structure where the majority of changes on routines need to be operationalized through their hands, managers and practitioners should deploy feedback in order to highlight the importance of routines as sources of guiding actions, activities and operations occurring in SMEs that create better internal challenges and processes.

The authors’ research suggests that routines are subject of change in dynamic and turbulent situations. Perceiving routines as antithetical to change fails to capture the distinctive features of change such as its fluidity, open-endedness, and inseparability. Likewise, the authors claim that routines are socially constructed organizational phenomena that can be modulated in different ways in SMEs.