All articles in the April 2026 (Volume 35, Issue 2) and the July 2026 (Volume 35, Issue 3) of the Journal of Management Inquiry are accessible via open access through August 2026.
APRIL 2026 ISSUE
CURATED
Collaboration for Tackling Grand Challenges: A Curated Conversation
Stephan Leixnering, Dennis C. Jancsary, Johanna Ayrault, Joel Gehman, Barbara Gray, Martina K. Linnenluecke, Renate E. Meyer and Ignacio Pavez
Vol. 35(2) 95–115
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251330828
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10564926251330828
In this Curated conversation, we bring together five scholars with a shared interest in collaborative approaches to grand challenges but who offer distinct approaches and foci. Our intention is to deepen the conversation between different communities in management research, with the ultimate objective of exploring potential avenues for mutual inspiration, learning, and collaboration. In their individual essays, the contributors to this conversation offer pointed insights into different aspects of collaboration in the context of grand challenges. In addition, we identify four pivotal themes across these essays, which, so we argue, constitute suitable foci for scholarly collaboration across community boundaries with the potential to recenter the "big picture" of collaboration. Our hope is to facilitate cross-pollination and thereby generate additional rigorous, realistic, and actionable approaches to the topic.
Keywords: collaboration, grand challenges, wicked problems, curated conversation
ESSAY
Thinking Differently About Thinking Theoretically: Developing a Design-Centered Approach to Organizational Theorizing
Ileana Stigliani, Kevin G Corley and Dennis Gioia
Vol. 35(2) 116–133
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251377740
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10564926251377740
We propose a novel, multi-faceted approach to organization theory building that is more likely to engender theories that are relevant to the work that managers and organizations do-one predicated on principles associated with design. Invoking and synthesizing a set of core design principles and applying them to the process of theory building generates an approach that not only provides organizational scholars a way of thinking differently about thinking theoretically, but also helps answer the call for increasing the relevance of our theories as a way of making contributions that are more practical, more prescient and greater in scope. The resulting model of "design theorizing" has several significant implications for addressing how organizational scholars approach current and future issues likely to affect the theory and practice of managing.
Keywords: design principles, organization theory, theory building, impact, relevance
EMPIRICAL
Fueling Market Growth Through Collective Political Action: Shaping Favorable Public Policy in Regulated Markets
Daisy Chung and Ece Kaynak
Vol. 35(2) 134–152
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251314754
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10564926251314754
Although prior research has suggested that collective actors such as industry or trade associations play an important role in advocating for their members, few studies have examined how they facilitate new market formation and growth in regulated fields. Our study shows how collective actors may be instrumental in carving out specific, favorable policies from initially vague legislation, and that they do so by creating a univocal political messaging strategy to achieve support from regulators and legislators. Our empirical context is the biodiesel market in the United States, which depended on continuing federal obligated consumption mandates to survive. Our findings contribute to the literatures on collective political action and new market emergence by delineating the political influence process through which collective actors shape the trajectory of nascent markets.
Keywords: business & government, institutional entrepreneurship, business & society, qualitative research
From the Field to the Field: Mapping a Landscape of Qualitative Research Through Scholars' Personal Letters
Alexandra Rheinhardt Beer, Eliana Crosina, Sarah Wittman, Tiffany Johnson, Kam Phung and Anna Roberts
Vol. 35(2) 153–176
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251320010
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/2BPSYQKTBBGH9EDVJDFH/full
Despite the growth of qualitative research, we lack a systematic understanding of the lived experiences of qualitative scholars themselves. Our study is motivated by the intuition that by shedding light on the "map makers behind the maps" we may gain a novel view of the field: of the assumptions, emotions, fears and hopes that anchor extant qualitative theorizing. In this spirit, we solicited personal letters from a sample of North American and Western European management and entrepreneurship scholars, inviting them to reflect on their experiences as bases for articulating insights and advice for future researchers. Our letters revealed three distinct "maps of the field": "roadmaps"; "political maps"; and "pictorial maps." These maps stressed different features, distinct temporal orientations (past or future), emotions (positive, negative, or mixed), and "navigation advice." Based on these various "maps" and insights, we draw theoretical and practical implications for future qualitative research.
Keywords: qualitative methods, qualitative research, cognitive perspectives
Does Social Identity Matter in Political Markets? The Influence of Managerial Tribal Identity in Corporate Political Strategy Formulation
Tahiru Azaaviele Liedong
Vol. 35(2) 177–198
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251344217
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10564926251344217
Research on the role of executives' identity in corporate political strategy (CPS) has mainly focused on political ideology and CPS firm-level outcomes, thus overlooking other underpinning social identity parameters and their intermediate effects on CPS. Drawing from social identity theory and a qualitative methodology entailing 38 interviews in Ghana, I explore how managers' relative tribal identity influences CPS formulation. The findings reveal that politicians use favorable treatment of managers from their tribes as a means to achieve social distinctiveness, gain social legitimacy, and wield social influence within the tribe. Consequent of the discrimination, manager-politician tribal consonance (tribal similarity) and tribal dissonance (tribal difference) affect managers' strategic choices about their firms' political aspirations, political modes, political positioning, and political tactics. Importantly, the findings show that tribal identity is impermeable and causes path dependency in political strategy decision-making. This study has significant implications for theory, practice, and future research.
Keywords: business and government, business and society, qualitative methods
GENERATIVE CURIOSITY
Free and Unmerited: The Unappreciated Organizing Power of Grace
Kylie Heales
Vol. 35(2) 199–205
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251389875
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10564926251389875
Grace, an unconditional and voluntary gift in the presence of unmet expectations, is often associated with theology yet pervades everyday life. Despite its ubiquity, management scholarship is quiet on understanding how grace shapes organizational relationships and outcomes. This article positions grace as a promising construct for management scholarship across entrepreneurship, strategic decision-making, organizational relationships, and institutional dynamics. I begin by articulating the three constitutive conditions of grace: social construction requiring undeserving recipients and unobligated givers, presence of unmet expectations, and absence of obligation by the giver. Next, I demonstrate how grace operates through institutional, exchange, and relational organizing processes that enable temporary norm deviations, transcend traditional exchange logics, and redistribute power to facilitate relationship renegotiation. Finally, I propose promising research directions that illuminate how actors navigate tensions between accountability and flexibility. This research agenda has potential to enhance the interactions and relationships between people, organizations and institutions.
Keywords: institutional theory, entrepreneurship, organizational behavior, strategy
REFLECTIONS ON EXPERIENCE
Recapturing Skillful Managerial Performance in Remote Work: The Phenomenology of How to Be a Great Manager When You Can't "Be There"
Kathy Lund Dean and Alex Bolinger
Vol. 35(2) 206–220
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251364183
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/HESPURKCE9PHRUNRCBXZ/full
Remote work is increasingly a workplace feature, rendering employee return-to-office (RTO) directives into flashpoints of conflict between managers and employees. Within this employee resistance we suggest that researchers and practitioners have overlooked a far more fundamental and consequential concern: the serious and multidimensional challenges to manager–employee relationality presented by remote work. Remote work is not working from the office, yet current managerial practices and organizational norms assume that the only difference is location. In this paper, we use McKnight's phenomenological managerial approach to argue that because managers and employees can't "be there" together, remote work creates information-impoverished environments that complicate and impair informal communication and increase misattributions. We unpack the characteristics of remote work that hinder many of the tools of skillful managerial performance. We then discuss a series of recommendations for how to return phenomenology to the practice and study of skillful management in remote work contexts.
Keywords: centralization/Decentralization, empowerment/Employee Involvement/Participation, performance assessment/Management, person-environment fit, structure, design and boundaries
PROVOCATIONS & PROVOCATEURS
Homogeneity in Diversity Management: Ironies, Neocolonialism, and a Call for Localism
Maja Graso and Cory Clark
Vol. 35(2) 221–223
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251408690
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/RBE5YVJ6HAQYW6FDXGIC/full
Managing differences is a perennial challenge of social life. Although such tensions appear across time, space, and cultures, their manifestations vary widely – who is in conflict and why, who is marginalized, and whether diversity is best addressed at the level of collectives, sub–groups, or individuals. Yet despite profound differences in social histories, demographic compositions, and local challenges, diversity scholarship and practice have converged on a remarkably similar, United States–based approach to managing difference under the banner of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The effectiveness of many such programs remains uncertain even within the United States, raising doubts about their suitability for global export. We suggest that this convergence reflects a form of soft, epistemic neocolonialism, in which the same diversity categories and proposed solutions spread across the world through institutional influences rather than local needs or demonstrated effectiveness. While identity–based approaches may advance marginalized groups in some settings, their application elsewhere risks misalignment and the diversion of limited scholarly resources from locally salient concerns. We conclude by calling for decolonialization and greater pluralism in how societies define and manage diversity.
Keywords: diversity management, diversity, equity, and inclusion, neocolonialisation, decolonialisation, epistemic influence
JULY 2026 ISSUE
CURATED
Beyond Ownership As Usual: The Implications of Steward-Ownership For Management Research
Luca Manelli, Simon Pek, Matthias Waldkirch, Heather Hachigian, Audrey Jamal, Steen Thomsen, Marya Besharov, Mark Hand, Blanche Segrestin, Kevin Levillain and Armand Hatchuel
Vol. 35(3) 227–252
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251357812
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10564926251357812
Steward-ownership is a novel conceptualization of ownership galvanizing attention from entrepreneurs, business owners, policymakers, and academics around the world. Two main principles distinguish it from traditional models of ownership: (1) decoupling control rights and economic rights and (2) asset lock, whereby company resources cannot be privatized by shareholders. This curated conversation among 11 interdisciplinary researchers unpacks the transformative potential of steward ownership for management theory. Contributors discuss how our current knowledge of steward-ownership, along with what we can come to know through targeted future research, offers important insights for scholarship on purpose, entrepreneurship, corporate governance, impact investing, hybridity, and alternative forms of organizing.
Keywords: steward-ownership, purpose, entrepreneurship, corporate governance, hybridity, impact investing, alternative forms of organizing
ESSAY
Mind the Flower: Rebalancing Form and Function in Organization Studies
Stoyan V. Sgourev
Vol. 35(3) 253–262
DOI: 10.1177/10564926261416824
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/YBXNPTRZDM2HFXDUJAJ6/full
Moving away from a tradition of craft production to an increasingly bureaucratic, mass-produced mode, the field of organization studies is becoming more formulaic. The subfield of "organizational aesthetics" is an example of a potential antidote, a nomadic foray into more exotic research contexts. However, the exploration of aesthetic phenomena for organizational purposes has largely conformed to an entrenched utilitarian paradigm that pursues managerial relevance and prioritizes "function" over "form." This essay highlights the blocking capacity of the utilitarian paradigm, questioning its assumptions and promoting a non-utilitarian perspective on aesthetics, inspired by the writings and poetry of Jim March. Drawing on art history, I direct attention to the aspects of aesthetic phenomena that militate against organization and commercial exploitation, and stimulate appreciation of beauty, sensory experiences and more elegant, less formulaic writing.
Keywords: aesthetics, business & society, education, non-utilitarian, creativity, commercialization
EMPIRICAL
Turning Fear Into a Weapon for Change in Response to Threats: A Partnership Approach
Megan Yuan Li and Shige Makino
Vol. 35(3) 263–280
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251353729
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/2UJ2FWHBCDVQFCUZF2JH/full
This study examines the management of negative emotions and organizational change in firms facing external threats. Employing a diverse sampling strategy, we conducted a multiple-case study of nine firms in China that have undergone three types of external threats: technological transformation, policy change, and increasing competition since 2010. The study finds that fear simultaneously drives middle managers' inertial behavior (internal fear) and willingness to change (external fear). This study also finds that partnership, which redefines middle managers' roles as "entrepreneurs" and the relationship between top managers and middle managers as business "partners," mitigates organizational rigidity by simultaneously changing middle managers' external and internal fears. Specifically, we identify three essential elements of partnership that grant middle managers' independence from assessment, independence in decision making, and independence from structural constraints, and we reveal their distinct roles in changing middle managers' emotions under threat.
Keywords: emotion, middle managers, change, organizational rigidity, qualitative research
Theorizing Governance Paradoxes: Insights From a Longitudinal Case Study of a Major Healthcare Partnership
Jan Heiberg Johansen, Kristian Høyer Toft, Morten Balle Hansen and Jeppe Agger Nielsen
Vol. 35(3) 281–301
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251377724
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/WWHF32G2EZKZTBM4ZVT2/full
Scholars often frame governance as fraught with paradoxes. However, few have harnessed recent advances in paradox research to theorize governance paradoxes. This study addresses that gap by developing an empirically based conceptualization of governance paradoxes. It is derived from a 10-year case study of a major healthcare partnership, investigated qualitatively through document analysis and interviews. Existing literature primarily treats governance paradoxes as something puzzling or focuses on only one aspect of the two definitional characteristics of paradoxes: the tensions and the responses. We extend a dual framework that examines the tensions defining key governance demarcations in organizational purpose and decision structures, as well as the patterns of decision-makers' responses, which evolve in response to crises and environmental shifts. This approach extends the scholarly conversation on governance through the lens of paradox and may help enhance decision-makers' understanding of and engagement with complex governance dynamics.
Keywords: paradox, business and government, change/transformation
A Case for Distinct Business Model Value and Impact Framing Understandings from a Study on Indian Sanitation Entrepreneurs
Aparna Venugopal and Paribhasha Sharma
Vol. 35(3) 302–323
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251377722
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10564926251377722
Past studies on entrepreneurial framing note that business model value is framed to impress target beneficiaries, while business model impact is framed as bestowing socio-economic benefits on the wider community. However, these studies assume that there is no theoretical difference between these framings. We challenge this assumption by studying 15 enterprises offering a range of innovative sanitation solutions across 14 Indian states. Secondary data were supported by 32 semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs and stakeholders between 2018 and 2023. Our analysis contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial framing by revealing distinct BMV framings associated with value creation/delivery emphasis, and impact framings associated with issue/outcome/reference point framings. We highlight the salient role that lock-in and reputed associations play in BMV creation emphasis framings. Finally, we extend understanding of how BMV and impact framings can interact to augment or diminish impact framing, particularly in relation to reference point othering.
Keywords: business and society, entrepreneurship, ethics
Collective Frames of Wrongdoing During Emergency: The Dilution of the Care Facilities' Contagion Scandal in Italy During the COVID-19 Emergency
Carlotta Cochis and Paula Ungureanu
Vol. 35(3) 324–342
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251387870
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/MBMBID2ECVUJPM6GTREE/full
How civil society makes sense of organizational scandals that entail allegations of wrongdoing during times of systemic emergency plays an important role in how these events are ultimately addressed. Yet we know little about what happens when disruptive events are attached to concurrent frames (i.e., wrongdoing, systemic emergency) by different stakeholders. We combine qualitative and topic modeling techniques to analyze the case of contagions in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) in Italy during the COVID-19 outbreak as collectively problematized by journalists, accused parties, and the general public on social media. We document a process of scandal dilution during a systemic emergency. We theorize the dilution as the consequence of a process of collective frame lamination whereby involved actors enact different strategies of scandal-emergency interplay: layering information, deflecting blames, and amplifying emotions. We add to work on collective framing of disruptive events and to research on organizational wrongdoing and emergency.
Keywords: business and society, corruption/scandal, hybridity, resilience, tensions
Leading and Being "Through Fire": Women CEOs' Identity Work During the Greek Crisis
Mary Skordia, Olga Epitropaki and Kyriakos Kyriakopoulos
Vol. 35(3) 343–365
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251387878
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/JV8VBWVVAIC2JK8PF2KZ/full
This paper explores how women leaders navigate and construct their identities under crisis. Analysing the narratives and lived experiences of women CEOs during the Greek crisis, we identify five dominant narratives: endurance, heroism, custodianship, sacrifice, and alienation, as central in women leaders' identity work. Each narrative explains how women leaders resolve tensions triggered by the crisis through different microprocesses of identity work. Our findings illustrate nine microprocesses underlying the five narratives: gender affirmation and identity layering (endurance), masculinization (heroism), cross-domain identity spillover (custodianship), cross-domain identity conflict, exhaustion and loneliness (sacrifice), and gender identity neutralization and disembodiment (alienation). Role metaphors like superwoman, captain, loner/martyr, or antihero, vividly animate these microprocesses. We contribute to better understandings of the glass cliff, gendered leadership, and doing gender under crisis. Our findings indicate partial hopeful agency: women leaders decide how to walk on the glass cliff, moving away from gendered stereotypes and the gender binary.
Keywords: leadership, leader identity, gender, crisis
REFLECTIONS ON EXPERIENCE
The Oscar for Best Researcher in a Supporting Role Goes to…
Jean M Bartunek and Peter A Heslin
Vol. 35(3) 366–378
DOI: 10.1177/10564926251382133
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10564926251382133
The contemporary focus on academic impact primarily emphasizes initiatives undertaken by researchers that are potentially useful to practitioners. It pays very little heed to academics supporting practitioners' initiatives to meet manifest societal needs. In this paper, we illustrate ways such support can be carried out. We do so by nominating six researchers from various disciplines for the award of "Best Researcher(s) in a Supporting Role", defined as one or more academics who, motivated by compassion and taking their lead from how practitioners frame and pursue concerns that are important for society, support in scholarly ways practitioners in addressing those concerns. Our nominees are James Sulzer and Lindsay Karfeld-Sulzer, Denise Rousseau, multiple academics who have evaluated the success of the Imagination Library, Ann Burgess, Timothy Neale, and Hans Hansen.
Keywords: sustainability, affect/emotions, corporate social responsibility, compassion, research impact
PROVOCATIONS & PROVOCATEURS
When a Flagship Conference Stops Caring: The Case of the AOM Annual Meeting
Maxim Voronov
Vol. 35(3) 379–381
DOI: 10.1177/10564926261432898
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10564926261432898
This provocation argues that the Academy of Management's Annual Meeting has become increasingly misaligned with the organization's stated commitments to inclusion, sustainability, and scholarly development. While AoM remains a vital institution, its flagship conference-now routinely exceeding 10,000 participants-undermines meaningful intellectual exchange and community formation through fragmenting scale, superficial paper sessions, and status-driven sociality. Two recent disruptions-the Covid-19 pandemic and the growing Trump-driven political precarity of the United States as a host location-have exposed the costs of organizational inertia and the normalization of risk and exclusion. Drawing on existing alternatives, including developmental formats within AoM and elsewhere, as well as confederated and hybrid approaches, the essay contends that the limitations of the current meeting can and should be addressed. Reimagining the conference as smaller, more developmental, and genuinely hybrid would reflect institutional care and align AoM's most visible event with its professed values.
Keywords: academy of management, conference, care, sustainability, inclusion
The Editors and Editorial Board of JMI thanks Sage Publications for its generosity in sharing published articles openly.
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Richard Stackman
Professor
University of San Francisco
San Francisco CA
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