43rd EGOS Colloquium 2027 — General Theme
Call for Papers
Societal Governance in the Face of Grand Challenges: Perspectives from the Global North and South, East and West
Note: The conference submission timeline will be announced by the organizers at a later date. Please stay tuned for updates.
Convenors
Zlatko Bodrožić
University of Liverpool, UK
Z.Bodrozic@liverpool.ac.uk
Paul S. Adler
University of Southern California, USA
padler@marshall.usc.edu
Nicole Ning Liu
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
ning.liu@cityu.edu.hk
Our field has developed conceptual tools for analyzing change in corporate governance in the face of grand challenges (Klein et al., 2019). In contrast, research on change in its macro-level counterpart—societal governance (Kourula et al., 2019)—has not kept pace, even though adaptation efforts at the firm level are enabled and constrained by the “rules of the game” (North, 1990) of the wider societal governance system (e.g., Bodrožić & Adler, 2025; Delmestri & Schüßler, 2025; Nyberg & Wright, 2025).
Research on societal governance is challenging because societal governance systems differ qualitatively across sectors and countries. While corporations are the dominant actors in societal governance systems in many—but not all—sectors of the U.S. (Aguilera & Jackson, 2010), in China, we observe that the key actors in many sectors are government agencies and other public-sector organizations (Zheng & Huang, 2018). In other regions of the world—Brazil, some European countries, India, or South Africa—mixed public-private governance of various kinds plays a relatively larger role (Musacchio et al., 2015).
This pronounced heterogeneity stands in stark contrast to the extent to which our governance frameworks have been shaped by research in the U.S. and Europe (Aguilera & Jackson, 2010), with the tacit assumption that technological, organizational, and public policy innovations emerge in “developed” Western countries and become models for developing countries (see Banerjee, 2022). This tacit assumption is increasingly untenable in a rapidly changing world where major innovations also emerge in countries such as China, India, or Brazil.
The goal of our sub-theme is to inspire research on societal governance from an international and comparative perspective. Achieving this will require broadening our intellectual resources. Several theoretical perspectives can inform this endeavor, including institutional theory (e.g., Delmestri & Schüßler, 2025; Jepperson & Meyer, 2021), stakeholder theory (Amis et al., 2020), Marxism (e.g., Adler, 2015), neo-Schumpeterian theory (Bodrožić & Adler, 2025; Bodrožić et al., 2025), cultural political economy (Jessop, 2022), and neo-Gramscian theory (e.g., Wright & Nyberg, 2017). Adjacent disciplines such as public management, public policy, political science, and comparative social sciences could further enrich our dialogue.
Perhaps most importantly, we need to involve perspectives not only from the Global North and West, but also from the Global South and East, including Asia, Africa, and Latin America. We therefore invite papers from a wide variety of theoretical and disciplinary lenses and, in particular, papers with international and comparative perspectives. We welcome both original empirical studies and conceptual contributions.
Possible topics and questions include, but are not limited to:
- What conceptualizations and frameworks of societal governance can we build on? Which conceptual and methodological tools can we use to study societal governance in the face of grand challenges (see Kourula et al., 2019)?
- What frameworks for international and comparative research are most useful in the study of societal governance in the face of grand challenges (see Aguilera & Jackson, 2010)? How can theoretical frameworks and research designs enable the inclusion of perspectives from the Global South and East?
- Across sectors and countries, who are the key orchestrators of collective action in the face of grand challenges in their respective contexts? What role in this orchestration is played by firms, government agencies, community-based organizations, and other societal actors? Across sectors and countries, what configurations of orchestrators drive more effective responses to these challenges (see Dhanaraj & Parkhe, 2006; Klein et al., 2019)?
- How do societal governance systems change over time, and how can existing systems adapt to more effectively address the multiple grand challenges we face? How do incumbent societal actors resist or redirect these adaptation efforts (see Wright & Nyberg, 2017)?
- How can engaged scholarship provide societal actors with concepts and tools to act more effectively as agents of change?
References
Adler, P. S. (2015). Community and innovation: From Tönnies to Marx. Organization Studies, 36(4), 445–471. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840614561566
Aguilera, R. V., & Jackson, G. (2010). Comparative and international corporate governance. Academy of Management Annals, 4(1), 485–556. https://doi.org/10.5465/19416520.2010.495525
Amis, J., Barney, J., Mahoney, J. T., & Wang, H. (2020). From the editors – Why we need a theory of stakeholder governance – and why this is a hard problem. Academy of Management Review, 45(3), 499–503. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2020.0181
Banerjee, S. B. (2022). Decolonizing management theory: A critical perspective. Journal of Management Studies, 59(4), 1074–1087. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12756
Bodrožić, Z., & Adler, P. S. (2025). System change, not climate change: Charting alternative responses to the climate crisis through international comparative research. Journal of Management Studies, 62(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13192
Bodrožić, Z., Hartmann, R. K., & Krabbe, A. D. (2025). The ascendance and decline of entrepreneurialism: A neo-Schumpeterian perspective. Academy of Management Perspectives. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2023.0378
Delmestri, G., & Schüßler, E. (2025). The Mission (Im)possible of climate action through quixotic institutional work. Journal of Management Studies, 62(2). https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13209
Dhanaraj, C., & Parkhe, A. (2006). Orchestrating innovation networks. Academy of Management Review, 31(3), 659–669. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2006.21318923
George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. (2016). Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges through management research. Academy of Management Journal, 59(6), 1880–1895. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2016.4007
Jepperson, R. L., & Meyer, J. W. (2021). Institutional theory: The cultural construction of organizations, states, and identities. Cambridge University Press.
Jessop, Bob. 2010 Cultural political economy and critical policy studies. Critical policy studies, 3 (3-4): 336-356.
Klein, P. G., Mahoney, J. T., McGahan, A. M., & Pitelis, C. N. (2019). Organizational governance adaptation: Who is in, who is out, and who gets what. Academy of Management Review, 44(1), 6–27. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2014.0459
Kourula, A., Moon, J., Salles-Djelic, M.-L., & Wickert, C. (2019). New roles of government in the governance of business conduct: Implications for management and organizational research. Organization Studies, 40(8), 1101–1123. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840619852142
Musacchio, A., Lazzarini, S. G., & Aguilera, R. V. (2015). New varieties of state capitalism: Strategic and governance implications. Academy of Management Perspectives, 29(1), 115–131. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2013.0094
North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge University Press.
Nyberg, D., & Wright, C. (2025). Confronting the climate crisis: Fossil fuel hegemony and the need for decarbonization, degrowth, and democracy. Journal of Management Studies, 62(8), 3659–3676. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13198
Wright, C., & Nyberg, D. (2017). An inconvenient truth: How organizations translate climate change into business as usual. Academy of Management Journal, 60(5), 1633–1661. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2015.0718
Zheng, Y., & Huang, Y. (2018). Market in state: The political economy of domination in China. Cambridge University Press.
Convenors’ Short Biographies
Zlatko Bodrožić
Zlatko Bodrožić is Professor of Digital Enterprise at the University of Liverpool. He is interested in the interaction of technologies, management models, organizational paradigms, and public policy regimes. His work has been published in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Academy of Management Perspectives, and Journal of Management Studies. His current research examines the evolution of societal governance systems in the context of digital transformation and climate change. At EGOS, he serves as lead coordinator of the Standing Working Group “Societal Governance in the Face of Polycrisis” (2028–2031).
Paul S. Adler
Paul S. Adler is the Harold Quinton Chair Emeritus of Business Policy and Professor Emeritus of Management and Organization at the University of Southern California. He has published widely in academic journals and edited several books, including The Oxford Handbook of Sociology and Organization Studies: Classical Foundations (2009), and The Oxford Handbook of Sociology, Social Theory, and Organization Studies: Contemporary Currents (2014). Most recently, he published The 99 Percent Economy: How Democratic Socialism can overcome the Crises of Capitalism (2019). At EGOS, he serves as co-coordinator of the Standing Working Group “Societal Governance in the Face of Polycrisis” (2028–2031).
Nicole Ning Liu
Ning Liu is Professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at the City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests are in the areas of government-business relations, regulation and compliance, and AI governance. Her research has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Public Administration Review, Policy Studies Journal, and The China Quarterly. She serves as co-editor of Regulation & Governance and has also guest-edited two special issues on regulatory governance. At EGOS, she serves as co-coordinator of the Standing Working Group “Societal Governance in the Face of Polycrisis” (2028–2031).