In this article, we theorize a novel approach to addressing the world’s grand challenges based on the philosophical tradition of American pragmatism and the sociological concept of robust action. Grounded in prior empirical organizational research, we identify three robust strategies that organizations can employ in tackling issues such as climate change and poverty alleviation: participatory architecture, multivocal inscriptions and distributed experimentation. We demonstrate how these strategies operate, the manner in which they are linked, the outcomes they generate, and why they are applicable for resolving grand challenges. We conclude by discussing our contributions to research on robust action and grand challenges, as well as some implications for research on stakeholder theory, institutional theory and theories of valuation.

This article, together with a companion video, provides a synthesized summary of a Showcase Symposium held at the 2016 Academy of Management Annual Meeting in which prominent scholars—Denny Gioia, Kathy Eisenhardt, Ann Langley, and Kevin Corley—discussed different approaches to theory building with qualitative research. Our goal for the symposium was to increase management scholars’ sensitivity to the importance of theory–method “fit” in qualitative research. We have integrated the panelists’ prepared remarks and interactive discussion into three sections: an introduction by each scholar, who articulates her or his own approach to qualitative research; their personal reflections on the similarities and differences between approaches to qualitative research; and answers to general questions posed by the audience during the symposium. We conclude by summarizing insights gleaned from the symposium about important distinctions among these three qualitative research approaches and their appropriate usages.

Existing cognitive and cultural perspectives on values have undertheorized the processes whereby values come to be practiced in organizations. We address this lacuna by studying the emergence and performance of what we call values practices. Drawing on an analysis of the development of an honor code within a large business school, we theorize the multiple kinds of values work involved in dealing with pockets of concern, knotting local concerns into action networks, performing values practices, and circulating values discourse. We conclude by discussing some opportunities and challenges that values work implies for future organizational scholarship.

Innovation processes are complex. It is through local interactions among people and technologies that diverse and novel outcomes emerge. Even when governed by simple rules, such interactions can generate nonlinear temporal dynamics. Given such complexities, how might an organization sustain innovation for continued growth and vitality? Drawing on an in-depth study of innovation practices and journeys at 3M Corporation, we identify how combinations of practices — which we conceptualize as complexity arrangements — afford multiple agentic orientations simultaneously for the actors involved and thereby facilitate sustained innovation.