We use this editorial essay as a call for a more effective use of new technologies, such as mobile apps and Web 2.0 tools, to educate students and other relevant stakeholders on business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability topics. We identify three overarching reasons that justify the need for new ways of teaching that further incorporate technology to foster the innovative thinking needed to tackle imminent societal grand challenges such as climate change and increasing inequality. First, (...) we are facing a new generation of millennials and Generation Z students who are digital natives and more likely to search for educational content on their electronic devices. Second, new technologies offer opportunities to reach students globally, helping to democratize education. Third, we posit that the intrinsic characteristics of societal grand challenges, which are complex, uncertain, and evaluative, can benefit from technology as an effective translator of multilayered concepts into more digestible action items. Our essay ends with a brief summary of the four essays included in the thematic symposium: “There is an App for that! The Use of New Technologies and Apps in Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Education.”. (shrink)

This article analyzes the concept of “grand challenges” as part of a shift in how scientists and policymakers frame and communicate their respective agendas. The history of the grand challenges discourse helps to understand how identity work in science and science policy has been transformed in recent decades. Furthermore, the question is raised whether this discourse is only an indicator, or also a factor in this transformation. Building on conceptual history and historical semantics, the two parts (...) of the article reconstruct two discursive shifts. First, the observation that in scientific communication references to “problems” are increasingly substituted by references to “challenges” indicates a broader cultural trend of how attitudes towards what is problematic have shifted in the last decades. Second, as the grand challenges discourse is rooted in the sphere of sports and competition, it introduces a specific new set of societal values and practices into the spheres of science and technology. The article concludes that this process can be characterized as the sportification of science, which contributes to self-mobilization and, ultimately, to self-optimization of the participating scientists, engineers, and policymakers. (shrink)

Tristan Murail est, avec Gérard Grisey, un des deux grands représentants de ce qu'il est convenu d'appeler la "musique spectrale". L'expression indique une référence constante à la structure microscopique des spectres sonores : c'est la vie intérieure des sons, avec leur harmonicité ou inharmonicité, leurs transitoires d'attaque ou d'extinction, qui constitue chez Murail le modèle par excellence pour construire des formes musicales. Cet ouvrage - le premier entièrement consacré à l'œuvre de Murail - évoque sa situation esthétique face à d'autres (...) courants de la musique d'après 1945. Un long entretien donne la parole au compositeur, pour retracer un parcours qui l'a mené de Messiaen à Scelsi et au-delà, ainsi qu'au pédagogue (Murail enseigne depuis plusieurs années aux Etats-Unis). Une analyse approfondie de l'une de ses pièces marquantes, L'Esprit des dunes, permet d'entrer dans son atelier, de suivre le processus de création qui conduit de l'analyse des sons à l'invention des formes. Enfin, Tristan Murail lui-même revient en détail sur chacune de ses œuvres, nous livrant son regard rétrospectif en un document précieux. (shrink)

In both scientific and popular circles it is often said that we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction. Although the urgency of our present environmental crises is not in doubt, such claims of a present mass extinction are highly controversial scientifically. Our aims are, first, to get to the bottom of this scientific debate by shedding philosophical light on the many conceptual and methodological challenges involved in answering this scientific question, and, second, to offer new philosophical (...) perspectives on what the value of asking this question has been — and whether that value persists today. We show that the conceptual challenges in defining ‘mass extinction’, uncertainties in past and present diversity assessments, and data incommensurabilities undermine a straightforward answer to the question of whether we are in, or entering, a sixth mass extinction today. More broadly we argue that an excessive focus on the mass extinction framing can be misleading for present conservation efforts and may lead us to miss out on the many other valuable insights that Earth’s deep time can offer in guiding our future. (shrink)

New products and services that tackle grand societal challenges often require changes in societal norms, values, and expectations. This research investigates the question of how innovating actors shape these informal institutions throughout the innovation process by drawing on the literature on social innovation and institutional theory. In a comparison of four case studies, we observe that all innovating actors under study engage in a diverse set of practices to challenge and shape societal norms and expectations (...) as well as user habits and routines throughout the innovation process. These activities can be clustered into unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral change processes, depending on the number of actors involved. Our findings highlight how different types of direct and indirect interactions between innovating actors and users along the innovation process shape the understanding of social innovation, and stress the central role of physical experiences and positive emotions among (future) users. Thereby, we provide for a more nuanced view of how companies that aim to bring technologies with different characteristics of innovativeness to the market shape the informal institutional environment throughout the different phases of the innovation process. (shrink)

Engaging patients in research conduct and agenda setting is increasingly considered as an ethical imperative, and a way to transcend views of patients as passive subjects by fostering their empowerment. However, patient engagement in research is still an emerging approach with debated definitional and operational frameworks. This song addresses the sometimes difficult encounter and elusive mutual understanding between researchers and patients. “What is PER?” is an impressionistic illustration of the challenges and issues that can be found in the universe (...) of patient engagement in research. (shrink)

Engaging patients in research conduct and agenda setting is increasingly considered as an ethical imperative, and a way to transcend views of patients as passive subjects by fostering their empowerment. However, patient engagement in research is still an emerging approach with debated definitional and operational frameworks. This song addresses the sometimes difficult encounter and elusive mutual understanding between researchers and patients. “What is PER?” is an impressionistic illustration of the challenges and issues that can be found in the universe (...) of patient engagement in research. (shrink)

Presentación de la parte monográfica en la que se insiste sobre el carácter universal de los lenguajes culturales asentados en la evangelización. Los estudios sobre el lenguaje de la evangelización como espacios de comunicación y expresión de la belleza son una respuesta intelectual al desafío evangelizador propuesto por el papa Francisco en la exhortación apostólica Evangelii gaudium. Desde la experiencia de Extremadura y la Península Ibérica se muestra el equilibrio entre la Iglesia particular y la Iglesia universal This paper is (...) a presentation of the monographic studies on the universal carácter of cultural languages used in evangelization. The studies on evangelisation languages such as communication spaces and beauty expression are proposed as answer to the pope Francis challenges in apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium. The equilibrium between particular Church and universal Church is presented from Extremadurian and Iberian experience. (shrink)

Marcel Beaufils fut un pedagogue exceptionnel qui exerca une influence decisive sur l'evolution de l'esthetique musicale en France, a partir des annees 50. Or, parmi ses ouvrages, Musique du son, musique du verbe est tres certainement celui qui porte le plus fortement la marque de son activite d'enseignant au Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris ; cette mission, il semblait l'entendre davantage comme celle d'un declencheur d'idees, catalyseur, plutot que du transmetteur d'un savoir fige une fois pour toutes. Bouleversant (...) toute tentative de classification academique, toute certitude acquise, ce livre laisse des pointilles ; un grand souffle traverse son ecriture. N'en deplaise aux musicographes, il s'agit la d'un ouvrage de creation, qui nous rappelle que Marce Beaufils etait egalement un ecrivain qui savait manier le verbe a la fois en tant que dramaturge et en tant que poete. (shrink)

Il y a trois défis pour la sécurité de l’Ouest. Le premier est que l’Ouest, comparé à l’Asie de l’Est, est en déclin. Dans vingt-cinq ans, la taille économique de la Chine continentale pourrait être supérieure à la taille du marché américain ; celle de l’Inde et de l’Indonesie être supérieure à la taille économique de l’Allemagne ; celle de la Corée du Sud excéder l’Angleterre ou la France ou l’Italie. Le second est la prolifération d’un savoir à doubleemploi et (...) le désastre économique de l’ex-Union Soviétique qui auront pour conséquence vraisemblable une prolifération du nucléaire. Le troisième concerne les changements de valeurs qui s’opèrent à l’Ouest et qui favorisent la formation de sociétés occidentales de moins en moins aptes à attaquer ou à se défendre. Mais la réduction du poids de l’Occident dans l’économie globale ne garantit plus que les efforts faciles l’emportent face aux défis du futur, qu’ils viennent des pouvoirs renforcés de l’Est asiatique ou des “desperados” islamiques. Ces défis ne seront vraisemblablement pas relevés au moyen de deux fausses prescriptions qui trouvent quelques faveurs en Europe Continentale. Premièrement, une grande partie de l’Europe de l’Ouest est lasse d’être confrontée à la “destruction créatrice” de ses emplois du fait de la concurrence de l’Asie de l’Est et désire ardemment le protectionnisme. Le remède protectionniste se bâtit sur un diagnostic grandement correct des problèmes occidentaux, mais il est tout de même dangereux si l’on met en perspective la morale, l’économie et la politique du pouvoir. Deuxièmement, certains Européens reconnaissent à juste titre que les grandes puissances historiques, comme la Grande- Bretagne ou la France ou l’Allemagne, n’ont plus une envergure suffisante pour être qualifiées de grandes puissances. Cependant, elles sousestiment la gravité et la vitesse du déclin de l’Occident. Une Europe définie par le noyau dur francoallemand deviendra trop étroite, avant même qu’elle ne soit établie dans cette structure. Vraisemblablement, même l’Union Européenne dans sa totalité sera trop petite avant qu’elle ne devienne une véritable communauté sur le plan sécuritaire. Au lieu de ces fausses prescriptions, cet article propose trois réponses aux dilemmes de l’Occident, ou encore trois façons de gérer le déclin de l’Occident. Premièrement, seule la coopération atlantique promet d’être une réponse efficace au dynamisme de l’Asie de l’Est et au déclin de l’Ouest. De plus, la coopération entre l’Amérique du Nord et l’Europe de l’Ouest a besoin d’être complétée par un nouvel engagement à l’égard d’une économie globale ouverte et d’une disposition à s’ajuster aux défis de celle-ci, afin de coopter l’Est asiatique dans une sphère globale de coprospérité. Cela doit vraisemblablement engendrer quelques coupes radicales dans l’Etat-providence. Deuxièmement, la prolifération nucléaire exige aussi une réponse. Il est concevable que la stratégie de défense contre la Chine soit encore plus difficile dans une vingtaine d’années qu’elle le fut contre l’Union Soviétique dans les années 1980. Mais cela ne devrait pas être une excuse pour ne pas construire des missiles de défense en réponse à ceux de l’Iran, de l’Irak, de la Lybie ou de l’Algerie. Troisièmement, les changements des valeurs en Occident semblent plus difficiles à traiter, mais ils renforcent la nécessité d’investir dans la coopération occidentale plutôt qu’uniquement européenne, la nécessité de coopter l’Asie de l’Est plutôt que de plonger dans une autre guerre froide, et la nécessité de contenir l’Etat-providence plutôt que de le développer. There are three challenges to Western security. First, compared to East Asia the West is in decline. In another twenty-five years, the economic size of Mainland China may exceed the size of the American market, India and Indonesia may exceed Germany, South Korea may exceed Britain or France or Italy. Second, the proliferation of dual use knowledge and the economic disaster in the former Soviet Union are likely to result in some nuclear proliferation. Third, value changes within the West will make Western societies ever less capable of deterrence and defense. But the reduced weight of the West in the global economy no longer guarantees that leisurely efforts succeed in meeting future challengers, whether from East Asian great powers or Islamic desperados. These challenges are unlikely to be met by two false prescriptions which enjoy some appeal in Continental Europe. First, much of Western Europe gets tired of observing the “creative destruction” of its jobs by East Asian competitors and longs for protectionism. The protectionist cure is built on a largely correct diagnosis of some Western problems, but nevertheless dangerous from an economic, moral, and power politics perspective. Second, some Europeans rightly recognize that historical great powers, like Britain or France or Germany, are no longer large enough to be great powers. But they underestimate the severity and speed of the decline of the West. A Franco- German core Europe will become too small, even before it is established. Conceivably, even the entire European Union will be too small before it becomes an effective security community. Instead of these false prescriptions this paper advocates three responses to Western dilemmas, or three modes of managing Western decline. First, only Atlantic cooperation promises to be an effective response to East Asian dynamism and Western decline. Moreover, cooperation between North America and Western Europe needs to be complemented with a renewed commitment to an open global economy and a readiness to adjust to its challenges, in order to coopt East Asia into a global co-prosperity sphere. This is likely to necessitate some radical cuts in the welfare state. Second, nuclear proliferation also needs some response. Conceivably, strategic defense is as difficult against China twenty years from now, as it was against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. But this should be no excuse for not building a missile and air defense against the likes of Iran, Iraq, Lybia, or Algeria. Third, the value changes within the West seem least tractable, but they reinforce the necessity of investing in Western rather than merely European cooperation, the necessity of coopting East Asia rather than stumbling into another Cold War, and the necessity for containing the welfare state rather than expanding it. (shrink)

In light of grand societal challenges, most recently the global Covid-19 pandemic, there is a call for research on responsible leadership. While significant advances have been made in recent years towards a better understanding of the concept, a gap exists in the understanding of responsible leadership in emerging countries, specifically how leaders resolve prevalent moral dilemmas. Following Werhane, we use moral imagination as an analytical approach to analyze a dilemmatic stakeholder conflict through the lense of different responsible (...) leadership mindsets and in light of different ethical principles and moral background theories. Based on this analysis, we arrive at a tentative moral judgement, concluding that the instrumental approach is morally inferior and recommending the integrative approach as the morally superior choice. In the subsequent discussion—focussed on what “could” be done, we apply the integrative script and use moral imagination as a pathway for generating morally justifiable solutions. Through this analysis, we provide novel insights on how to apply an integrative responsible leadership approach to a stakeholder conflict situation, using the single case study to expand the responsible leadership discussion to emerging markets. (shrink)

“In this article we sketch out the landscape for this Special Issue on anticipating and embedding the societal challenge of nanotechnologies. Tools that actors may choose to employ for these processes are articulated, and further explored through the introduction of the seven articles which comprise this Issue. Taken together, these articles create a cogent narrative on the societal challenges posed by nanotechnologies. They are drawn together by three distinct themes, each of which is briefly considered within this (...) context of this Introductory article”. (shrink)

Education is facing challenges and issues that arise both on the changing needs of modern society and on difficulties to which it has always been difficult to offer effective solutions. This paper, considering this general context, briefly introduces the research field of Educational Technology and identifies and discusses two main lines of evolution that have characterized this sector from its beginning. Then, some perspectives that depict the current situation are proposed. The aim is to sketch a framework to support (...) the understanding of the variety of approaches and research questions assumed by research studies in the field of educational technology. (shrink)

We argue that philosophy of trust can be employed to counter the paralysis of action ensuing out of the experience of polycrisis in the current state of internation social life. The philosophy of trust can recognize the impact of the polycrisis on contemporary societies all the while that an analysis of trust inevitably takes the concrete life world experiences of humans as a central part of the analysis. Using the philosophy of trust as an analytic tool involves digging into relations (...) of trust and distrust situated in concrete social environments which takes humans’ concrete experiences of trust, distrust, breaches of trust into account all the while that it’s theoretical conceptualizations can pay heed to overall societal challenges. As such it provides a means to study our contemporary world of polycrisis without simplifying the social world or succumbing to paralysis. This is shown in short discussions of the five articles included in the special issue. (shrink)

What are consequential world problems? As “grand societal challenges”, one might define them as problems that affect a large number of people, perhaps even the entire planet, including problems such as climate change, distributive justice, world peace, world nutrition, clean air and clean water, access to education, and many more. The “Sustainable Development Goals”, compiled by the United Nations, represent a collection of such global problems. From my point of view, these problems can be seen as complex. (...) Such complex problems are characterized by the complexity, connectivity, dynamics, intransparency, and polytely of their underlying systems. These attributes require special competencies for dealing with the uncertainties of the given domains, e.g., critical thinking. My position is that it is not IQ, but complex problem-solving competencies for dealing with complex and dynamic situations, that is important for handling consequential global problems. These problems require system competencies, i.e., competencies that go beyond analytical intelligence, and comprise systems understanding as well as systems control. Complex problem-solving is more than analytic intelligence. (shrink)

This Special Issue commemorates the 60th anniversary of Business & Society with nine rigorous literature reviews that address important societal problems and provide opportunities for theory development in the business and society field; in this introduction we present an overview of the Special Issue. With the theme “Building on Its Past,” the nine articles address a host of contemporary issues, including climate change, wicked problems, business and human rights, human health, certifications standards, the governance of artificial intelligence, stakeholder engagement, (...) stakeholder theory, and corporate political activity. Together, these reviews offer a wealth of suggested themes, theories and approaches that can drive our research forward for the next decades in business and society research and practice. Using the lens of a miner-prospector continuum to categorize the diversity of articles within this special issue, a common theme emerges across the portfolio of reviews: they all call for a more systemic and integrative perspective toward studying the complex interactions that link business and society actors and issues. Building on these findings, we encourage future scholars to fill long-standing researched gaps through a more open systems approach, which supports both contextually sensitive and multi-level and multi-disciplinary approaches to address grand societal challenges. We conclude with specific suggestions as to how business and society scholars might use an open systems approach, including embracing methodologies to address complex causal pathways, theorizing with a view towards spanning external and internal elements of an organization, and reflecting on the temporal and spatial dynamics of complex systems. (shrink)

Social inequalities are partly caused by habitual organizational practices. In this vein, to overcome those, organizations now need to develop new organizational capabilities aimed at enhancing their attention towards societal issues. In our study, we apply the theory of mindfulness to explain how it may help organizations overcome habitual organizing that fuels social inequalities. Guided by the microfoundational perspective of organizational capability, we conceptualize individual characteristics, processes, and structures that collectively form mindfulness capability for social justice. We perceive it (...) as an organizational capability that reflects the extent to which an organization possesses a collective social justice awareness, i.e., awareness of the impact on social justice in society through its organizational practices. We argue that, when adopted by organizations, mindfulness, by increasing the awareness of the organizational impact on society, helps notice, examine, and question the correctness of taken-for-granted organizational practices. From our perspective, this new capability will lead to changes in organizational practices that fuel social inequalities. Our study contributes to the literature on sustainable organizational development and mindfulness research in organizations. Managerial implications and future research directions are also discussed. (shrink)

In European research and innovation policy, Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Open Science (OS) encompass two co-existing sets of ambitions concerning systemic change in the practice of research and innovation. This paper is an exploratory attempt to uncover synergies and differences between RRI and OS, by interrogating what motivates their respective transformative agendas. We offer two storylines that account for the specific contexts and dynamics from which RRI and OS have emerged, which in turn offer entrance points to further (...) unpacking what ‘opening up’ to society means with respect to the transformative change agendas that are implicit in the two agendas. We compare differences regarding the ‘how’ of opening up in light of the ‘why’ to explore common areas of emphasis in both OS and RRI. We argue that while both agendas align with mission-oriented narratives around grand societal challenges, OS tends to emphasize efficiency and technical optimisation over RRI’s emphasis on normative concerns and democracy deficits, and that the two agendas thus contrast in their relative legitimate emphasis on doable outcomes versus desirable outcomes. In our conclusion, we reflect on the future outlook for RRI and OS’ co-existence and uptake, and on what their respective ambitions for transformation might mean for science-society scholars and scholarship. (shrink)

As the cognitive neurosciences set out to challenge our understanding of consciousness, the existing conceptual panoply of meanings attached to the term remains largely unaccounted for. By way of bibliometric analysis, the following study first reveals the breadth and shift of meanings over the last decades, the main tendency being a more 'brainy' concept of consciousness. On this basis, the emergence of consciousness studies is regarded as a 'trading zone' (Galison) in which experimental, philosophical and experiential accounts are dialectically engaged. (...) Outside of academic discourse, a neurocognitive concept of consciousness is embraced by popular self-help literature that sweepingly adopts this new discourse and the novel neuropharmacological tools in the self-help toolbox. Consciousness studies are hence not only the product of epistemological and methodological struggles (scientific dimension) but also part of the current re-alignments regarding the notion of consciously acting selves in society (societal dimension). (shrink)

Over the past decade, Convergence Research has increasingly gained prominence as a research, development, and innovation (RDI) strategy to address grand societal challenges. However, a dearth of research-based evidence is available to aid researchers, research teams, and institutions with navigating the complexities attendant to the specifics of Convergence Research. This paper presents a multilevel research agenda that accounts for an integral understanding of Convergence Research as a complex adaptive system. Furthermore, by developing a framework that accounts for (...) ancillary, yet essential, systems associated with Convergence Research, we enrich the agenda with a literature-steeped discussion that considers how systems-based practices of collaboration, inquiry, and context interact with the processes and products of Convergence Research. Finally, we synthesize and apply insights from the reviewed literature by providing paths for empirical exploration emphasizing systems-based practices. In so doing, we delineate an extended boundary for a research stream that both clarifies and enlarges our understanding of Convergence Research as a ‘system-of-systems’. (shrink)

This article advances sustainability towards a new logic that favors the flourishing of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and well-being from North to South. It presents a Global Dual-Perspective (GDP) and a Dynamic Equilibrium Framework (DEF) that inform sustainability, management, and international business with a paradoxical view of the SDGs and a strengthened analysis that outlines the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in addressing the SDGs within and across the North–South. This article reveals that organizations will effectively unleash virtuous cycles of (...) SDGs and well-being when confronting and juxtaposing environmental, health, social, economic, and law-oriented goals. Furthermore, virtuous cycles will be more successful when splitting and integrating short- and long-term conflicting goals within and across the North–South to fuel systemic resilience and sustainable development. (shrink)

Despite the significant attention gained by the concept of creating shared value (CSV) over the past decade, there is a lack of empirical research on corporate practices that achieve social and environmental benefits through CSV dynamics. Through an in-depth single case study, this research explores open innovation (OI) practices contributing to the grand challenge of climate change and their role as microfoundations in the three CSV dynamics proposed by Porter and Kramer: (1) reconceiving products and markets; (2) redefining productivity (...) in the value chain; and (3) enabling local cluster development. Building on a 3-year (October 2019–October 2022) interaction with Enel—a very large company in the renewable energy sector—we collected qualitative data on the OI practices implemented in the construction, operating, and repurposing phases of three of its industrial sites. Employing a three-step data analysis process, the study identified 29 OI practices across the sites, which have been grouped into 11 CSV microfoundations. Our findings contribute to understanding the organizational factors in sustainable value creation by bridging the gap between CSV and OI literature and confirm the effectiveness of OI models for addressing societal challenges like climate change. (shrink)

Genome Editing Techniques are seen to be at the frontier of current research in the field of emerging biotechnologies. The latest revolutionary development, the so-called CRISPR technology, represents a paradigmatic example of the ambiguity of such techniques and has resulted in an international interdisciplinary debate on whether or not it is necessary to ban the application of this technique by means of a moratorium on its use for human germline modifications, particularly in human embryos in the reproduction process. However, given (...) that other germline engineering techniques like mitochondrial DNA transfer techniques are already permitted and applied, the question arises what lies at the root of the apparent social unease about the modification of the human germline by Genome Editing Techniques like CRISPR. Against this background, the book seeks to make a substantial contribution to the current debate about a responsible and participatory framework for research on emerging biotechnologies by analysing underlying perceptions, attitudes, arguments and the reasoning on Genome Editing Techniques. (shrink)

Due to the innovative possibilities of digital technologies, the issue of increasing automation is once again on the agenda – and not only in the industry, but also in other branches and sectors of contemporary societies. Although public and scientific discussions about automation seem to raise relevant questions of the “old” debate, such as the replacement of human labor by introducing new technologies, the authors focus here on the new contextual quality of these questions. The debate should rethink the relationship (...) between technology and work with regard to quantitative and qualitative changes in work. In this article, our example will be the introduction of automation in industry, which has been reflected in the widely recognized study by Frey and Osborne in 2013. They estimated the expected impacts of future computerization on US labor market outcomes as very high, specifically regarding the number of jobs at risk. Surprisingly, this study was the starting point of an intensive international debate on the impact of technologies on the future of work and the role of technological change in working environments. Thus, according to the authors, “old” questions remain important, but they should be reinterpreted for “new” societal demands and expectations of future models of work. (shrink)

This collection addresses two different audiences: 1) historians and philosophers of the life sciences reflecting on collaborations across disciplines, especially as regards defining and addressing Grand Challenges; 2) researchers and other stakeholders involved in cross-disciplinary collaborations aimed at tackling Grand Challenges in the life and medical sciences. The essays collected here offer ideas and resources both for the study and for the practice of goal-driven cross-disciplinary research in the life and medical sciences. We organise this introduction (...) in three sections. The first section provides some background and context. The second motivates our take on this topic and then outlines the central ideas of each paper. The third section highlights the specificity and significance of this approach by considering: a) how this collection departs from existing literature on inter- and trans-disciplinarity, b) what is characteristic about this approach, and c) what role this suggests for the history and philosophy of the life sciences in addressing Grand Challenges. (shrink)

Managing grand challenges demands a relational leader who encourages collaboration, coordination, and trust with various stakeholders. Although leaders appear to play a critical role in addressing grand challenges, relatively little research exists about the factors that inform stakeholder perceptions of leaders during a grand challenge. To address this limitation, we integrate implicit leadership theory and gender role theory to consider stakeholders’ gender prescriptive expectations when evaluating leader effectiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic. We theorize that stakeholders (...) advantage female leaders based on mental schemas of what is required in a pandemic—relational leadership—and stakeholders’ prescriptive expectations of female leaders as more relational. Using a laboratory experiment, we find that female leaders are perceived as more relational, and hence, more effective than their male counterparts. Our findings advance scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding of strategic leadership, stakeholder management, and grand challenges. (shrink)

In this article, we report on eight grand challenges for value sensitive design, which were developed at a one-week workshop, Value Sensitive Design: Charting the Next Decade, Lorentz Center, Leiden, The Netherlands, November 14–18, 2016. A grand challenge is a substantial problem, opportunity, or question that motives sustained research and design activity. The eight grand challenges are: Accounting for Power, Evaluating Value Sensitive Design, Framing and Prioritizing Values, Professional and Industry Appropriation, Tech policy, Values and (...) Human Emotions, Value Sensitive Design and Intelligent Algorithms, and Value Tensions. Each grand challenge consists of a discussion of its importance and a set of tractable key questions. (shrink)

Considering the urgency of addressing grand challenges that affect human health and achieving the ambitious health targets set by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, the role of business in improving health has become critical. Yet, our systematic review of the business–health literature reveals that business research focuses primarily on occupational health and safety, health care organizations, and health regulations. To embrace the health externalities generated by business activities, we propose that future research should investigate the conditions under (...) which business articulates and participates in health challenges, engages in multilevel actions toward tackling health challenges, and improves health outcomes and its impact on the health of external stakeholders, including customers and local communities. We also urge business scholars to engage with the public health research community to increase impact. (shrink)

Research on Grand Challenges often neglects capitalism as a major source of many social and ecological problems, and/or as a barrier to their solution. To find sustainable solutions through our research, we need to make explicit and problematize this systems-level cause of Grand Challenges instead of only looking for solutions at the organizational level.

This chapter critically examines the dominant tradition in formal education as an indirect driver of biocultural homogenization while revealing that there is an alternative tradition that fosters biocultural conservation. The dominant tradition, originating in the Seventeenth Century scientific revolution effected by René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Isaac Newton, John Locke and allied thinkers, privileges science, seen as facilitating the technological domination of the world in the service of economic growth, as the only genuine knowledge. This is at the foundation of a (...) globalized, homogenizing culture that reduces everything and everyone to instruments of the globalized economy. The alternative, now recognized as the Radical Enlightenment, has its roots in the Renaissance. Represented by thinkers such as Giordano Bruno, Giambattista Vico, Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, it challenges such dogmatic scientism and upholds the value of diverse cultures, past and present. It offers an alternative tradition and model of education fostering imagination, understanding and appreciation of diversity in the quest for wisdom. It is a model of education which engenders respect for and appreciation of the value of different cultures, including indigenous wisdom with very different attitudes to nature, thereby developing the capacity to reflect on, question, criticize and overcome the homogenizing imperialism of mainstream modernist culture. (shrink)

This article reviews the development of social quality indicators and the challenges ahead. First, through a review of recent Asian and Australian work carried out on social quality indicators, and the World Bank related work on “social development indicators,” the article argues that social quality indicators research should move beyond the empirical level of particular policy areas. Therefore, it should be guided by a clear methodological perspective regarding the role of indicators as part of a social quality theory (SQT) (...) and their relation to the social quality approach (SQA). Second, the article opens a debate about the rationale behind distinguishing between three different functions of social quality indicators. Indicators should address the change in the conditional factors in daily life, as manifested in its economic, socio-political, socio-cultural and environmental dimensions, in order to examine the consequences of general trends and contradictions in (1) societal circumstances, (2) the development (or lack of development) toward sustainability, and (3) the related issue of sustainable urban development. Before 2010 social quality scholars mainly concentrated on the first issue. Recently, however, they are approaching all three issues. It is essential to delve deeper into SQT and the SQA for understanding these three issues separately and integrally. This has implications for the nature of social quality indicators and their comparison to those of other mainstream approaches; the article introduces this agenda of work. (shrink)

This article is a revised version of a lecture delivered at the Colloque ‘Histoire des Mentalités, Histoire des résistances, ou les Prisons de longue durée’, Aix-La Baume, 20–21–22 septembre 1980.

This interesting book is a compilation of the lectures and discussions held during a four-day event "Grand Challenges for Science in the 21st Century" organized by Para Limes at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The elite group of speakers included Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner who called on all scientists to adopt a truth-seeking approach and not be afraid of challenging assumptions. The other panellists were Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and past President of the Royal Society, the much-cited (...) Terrence Sejnowski from the renowned Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the well-known keynote speaker in economics and complexity sciences Brian Arthur, the former President of the European Research Council Helga Nowotny and the Director of the Parmenides Center for the Conceptual Foundations of Science Eors Szathmary. The lively sessions were moderated by the Danish writer Tor Norretranders. The panel tackled topics from evolution and the origin of the universe to modern technologies and artificial intelligence. The challenges presented during the event are bound to get the reader thinking about what may lie ahead in our future. (shrink)

Tackling grand challenges requires coordination and sustained effort among multiple organizations and stakeholders. Yet research on stakeholder theory has been conceptually constrained in capturing this complexity: existing accounts tend to focus either on dyadic level firm–stakeholder ties or on stakeholder networks within which the focal organization is embedded. We suggest that addressing grand challenges requires a more generative conceptualization of organizations and their constituents as stakeholder systems. Using the metaphor of ballet and insights from dance theory, (...) we highlight four defining dimensions of stakeholder systems (two structural and two dyadic); we proceed to offer a dynamic model of how those dimensions may interact and coevolve. Our metaphor and resulting theory of stakeholder systems are thereby well equipped to incorporate the complexity of tackling grand challenges, where many contemporary stakeholder arrangements are oriented around issues rather than firms. (shrink)

The starting premise of this paper is that business models can transform social reality—sometimes to an extreme. Then, building on the concept of “grand challenges,” we argue that such transformations can be either positive or negative in nature —even in the case of business models designed to improve value not only economically but environmentally and socially as well. To further our understanding of the negative aspects, we introduced two conceptual categories of business model: those for oppression or depletion (...) and exclusionary ones. We further argue that bringing the notion of grand challenges center-stage highlights four elements that can contribute to emerging research and inform practice on transformational business models. These elements are: participatory forms of architecture; multivocal inscriptions; scaffolding; and proximity. They are central components of what we name transformational business models. (shrink)

Business is expected to contribute to grand challenges (GC) such as poverty within their corporate social responsibilities. Multi‐stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) have developed to a popular governance model to address GC. While existing scholarship has discussed the positive and negative aspects of MSIs, we know relatively little about how corporations within MSIs are held accountable. The objective of the study is to analyze the dynamics of accountability relationships between the corporate actor and the accountability forum to conceive a process (...) model for effective accountability relationships in developing countries. We conducted an inductive study which explored the tensions the accountability forum perceives in MSI accountability relationships and the criteria to meet the forum's accountability claims. Our study identified four accountability criteria: transparency, inclusion, procedural fairness, and efficacy. Our main theoretical claim is that considering the four accountability criteria in the process of facilitating, dialoguing, and evaluating allows affected stakeholders to validate and match legitimacy claims with their own expectations, and thus, manage MSIs more effectively. Our contribution to existing scholarship on MSIs in developing countries is that we offer a novel perspective on analyzing the effectiveness of MSIs to address GC through our focus on one element of MSIs––specifically accountability. Beyond academic theorizing, this perspective may well hold value for nongovernmental organizations, policymakers, and business managers as it advances a concept of responsibility based on a set of accountability criteria which have the potential to become a cornerstone for how MSI members can organize to effectively address GC in developing countries. (shrink)

We explore why and how corporations seek to build community resilience as a strategic response to grand challenges. Based on a comparative case study analysis of four corporations strategically building community resilience in five place-based communities in South Africa, as well as three counterfactual cases, we develop a process model of corporate practices and contingent factors that explain why and how some corporations commit to community resilience building and whether they try to do so directly or indirectly. We (...) thus help explain corporations’ strategic contributions to community resilience, and we emphasise the role of place-specific resources, social-ecological system viability, and limited statehood in motivating such organisational responses to grand challenges. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to understand how governance mechanisms in cross-sector collaborations (CSCs) for sustainability affect value creation and capture and subsequently the survival of this organizational form. Drawing on a longitudinal, participatory, single-case study of collaborative action in the textile industry, we identify three governance mechanisms—safeguarding, bundling and connecting—that coevolve with the rising and waning of collaborative tensions and the shifting levels of action in the CSC we studied. These mechanisms aided value creation and helped facilitate private (...) value capture. We integrate these insights into a process model that visualizes the interplay between governance mechanisms of tensions and systems of value creation and capture in CSCs for sustainability. Our study contributes to the cross-sector collaboration literature by providing a dynamic and nuanced understanding of how governance mechanisms influence outcomes in CSCs for sustainability. We also add to the business model for sustainability literature by theorizing the value creation and capture system of collaborative rather than individual organizations. Our findings have important implications for policymakers who fund collaborative organizations and practitioners who manage or participate in them. (shrink)

This paper argues that challenges that are grand in scope such as "lifelong health and wellbeing", "climate action", or "food security" cannot be addressed through scientific research only. Indeed scientific research could inhibit addressing such challenges if scientific analysis constrains the multiple possible understandings of these challenges into already available scientific categories and concepts without translating between these and everyday concerns. This argument builds on work in philosophy of science and race to postulate a process through (...) which non-scientific notions become part of science. My aim is to make this process available to scrutiny: what I call founding everyday ideas in science is both culturally and epistemologically conditioned. Founding transforms a common idea into one or more scientifically relevant ones, which can be articulated into descriptively thicker and evaluatively deflated terms and enable operationalisation and measurement. The risk of founding however is that it can invisibilise or exclude from realms of scientific scrutiny interpretations that are deemed irrelevant, uninteresting or nonsensical in the domain in question-but which may remain salient for addressing grand-in-scope challenges. The paper considers concepts of "wellbeing" in development economics versus in gerontology to illustrate this process. (shrink)

The Grand Challenges literature brings under its umbrella a wide variety of disjointed phenomena but runs the risk of reinventing the wheel as well as overlooking incremental progress and past work. To avert this, scholars need to (dis)connect (dis)similar issues, build on past research on these issues, and create opportunities for generalizability through theoretical examinations.

SummaryIn the present article it is argued that Pieter de la Court's Political Maxims of the State of Holland presented a remarkably consistent grand strategy for Holland in relation to its Dutch allies and the European powers. I present an outline of this strategy, which was built around the accomplishment and defence of commercial goals; I sketch a historical context that takes into account the general historical shift from tribute-taking agrarian societies towards commercial wealth-generating polities, and also the violent (...) contemporary military and ideological background against which De la Court's strategy stands out; I argue that his strategy can be understood by his use of three basic game theoretic concepts ; and I stress the distinctive character of De la Court's work, by comparing the practical and strategic use of these concepts in the Maxims with the function of the same concepts in the philosophical contract theories of Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza. (shrink)