In this study, I aim to understand business responses to social-ecological grand challenges. Prior research has suggested that problem identification and attribution help to foster meaning and action on societal issues. In particular, framing theory has offered significant insight into individual actors' cognitive processes, their skillful articulation of socially resonant interpretive frames, and the role of particular actor categories and repertoires in framing success. At meso and macro levels, researchers have tended to focus on social movements and the outcomes of highly charged political contests between these groups and state actors. As such, we know far less about the co-creative mechanisms and contextual ‘raw materials' that underpin meaning making activities and interaction between groups, especially in instances where the focus is on firms and the significance being attached to ambiguous societal issues for which they are not directly responsible. A key outstanding question is therefore: how do firm-internal agents interpret, signify and mobilize organizational responses to grand challenges? In an effort to address these lacunae, this study explores the proactive efforts of three firms to interpret the complexity of social-ecological grand challenges that they share with the rest of society and to address these issues through meaningful and mitigating action. My inductively derived theoretical model of ‘interactional framing for issue advancement' shows how the active engagement of external influences by internal change or ‘signifying agents' facilitates action on grand challenges within and beyond the firm. While framing activities charge grand challenge issues with meaning and help to organize actors' understanding of, experience, and action around these issues, material affordances and interaction with external actors provide the enabling environment for resonant interpretations to take hold and to facilitate enactment. Grounded in my cases, the model also depicts the progressive sequencing of signifying agent efforts across three broad stages: Introduction and Disruption, Experimentation, and Enactment. My analysis contributes to the management literature by suggesting that the signification work of firm-internal agents is a process of mediation, shaped by the distinct and emergent character of grand challenges and the interplay of social and material mechanisms. Because such issues require a greater emphasis on problem-solving and novel sources of information, my account contrasts with conventional representations of meaning-making as a relatively straightforward line of action from individual logics ‘pulled down' from institutional systems and packaged attractively to appeal to ‘outsiders' less involved in the processes of signification. It also provides an alternative to the popular view of meaning construction as a ‘contest' or essentially dispute-oriented process. Instead, I argue that grand challenge issue advancement demands a more intricate, interactional and contextual process of meaning-making by interested actors and issue proponents internal and external to the firm. The model of signification work I offer in this study thus more fully captures the perspective that actors do not simply assess and attach importance to complex issues, but construct the very nature of the issue itself, and that this construction is a precursor to collaborative action on grand challenges.

Research Background: Climate change poses a core threat to the current and future welfare of society. Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly susceptible to challenges associated with climate change, most of which are bound to have large-scale societal impacts. Fortunately, Grand Challenges (GCs) can also enable opportunities for sustainable entrepreneurship to emerge. As entrepreneurs work in larger interrelated ecosystems, it is noteworthy to explore the utilization of ecosystems to develop sustainable ventures that address GCs. Current research has not addressed the interplay between external enablers and entrepreneurial ecosystems, especially in the Sub-Saharan context. The focus of this study is to explore how sustainable entrepreneurs acted on GCs in the pursuit of venture opportunities, and how ecosystems were utilized to foster the development of entrepreneurial agents and their ventures. Research Purpose: The purpose of this research is to identify how GCs facilitate sustainable entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa, given the interaction between entrepreneurs, their ecosystems, and climate change-associated GCs. Method: The research paradigm for this study follows critical realism. Meaning, we question the nature of reality as inherently multilayered and align with epistemic relativism. An explorative interview-based study was adopted for our methodology. We sampled our interview candidates purposively through the formation of several criteria. In total, we collected data from 20 semi-structured interviews through online platforms. We analyzed our data by interpreting principles of thematic analysis and the theory- building approach, to connect empirical themes to theoretical constructs. Conclusion: The results for this study show that sustainable entrepreneurs act on a wide variety of GCs. Within ecosystems, we noticed that sustainable development, cultural belief systems, educational infrastructure, governance, and resource accessibility influence the potential for ecosystems to develop. Specifically, we adopted three dimensions in which these pillars have influences: the entrepreneurial, communal, and structural level. The findings indicated that the scope of external enablers is fluid due to ecosystem interactions. Moreover, opacity and agency-intensity of enabling mechanisms can be reduced by developing entrepreneurial ecosystems. We also noted that entrepreneurs themselves can take on the role of ecosystem-builders. Our findings revised current understandings of sustainable entrepreneurship and redefined the concept to create a more inclusive label.

Scholars have examined how occupational mandates – shared understandings of an occupation’s purpose – are established and how these mandates, to be fulfilled, translate into occupational jurisdictions. To date, however, we lack a clear understanding of how occupational members uphold their mandates when they are impossible to fulfill. I define an impossible occupational mandate as a purpose pursued by a given occupation, but almost impossible to attain. I draw from observations, interviews and archives related to the work of reentry counselors, whose occupational mandate is to ensure former prisoners (i.e., their clients) secure stable employment. My findings suggest that counselors faced multiple challenges in fulfilling their mandate. Faced with an impossible mandate, counselors revised their mandate in different ways, emphasizing their roles as experts in shaping success (advisors), assisting clients with their specific needs (aides), or advancing clients’ cause through their work (advocates). In doing so, they deflected their attention away from their initial mandate and onto their revised mandates. Counselors also shared their mandate with others in their proximate environments. To different degrees, counselors from each group projected partnerships with outsiders to their occupation: they imagined clients, employers, other human and correctional service professionals as possible partners who could share the responsibility for fulfilling their mandate. In doing so, they diffracted the mandate towards people outside of their occupation. Findings suggest that how counselors revised their mandate shaped who they projected as key partners, and how they reported feeling about failed mandate partnerships. Additionally, while all counselors performed the mandate despite the strain it could induce, and used different strategies to cope, the advocates expressed the strongest feelings of emotional strain of all groups. I discuss the connections between deflection and diffraction — namely, the two main strategies people used to uphold impossible mandates — and the conditions under which these strategies can limit professionals’ strain and help them uphold their mandates. Findings add to our understanding of an understudied yet key part of today’s occupational landscape — professionals who hold impossible mandates – and extend the study of occupations and meaningful work. I also discuss implications for labor market inequality, social justice, prisoner reentry programs, and practice. / 2024-05-16T00:00:00Z

This dissertation examines the challenges of organizing in times of global displacement in three different studies. The papers are based on an ethnographic case study of an international aid organization and its operations in Rwanda. Each paper investigates a distinct aspect of responding to one of society's most pressing global problems, gradually unpacking how current organizational responses form a key part of the problem. The first paper explores the challenges of representing multi-sectoral contexts, as global crisis and grand challenges cut across multiple different sectors and domains. Drawing on pragmatist ideas, the paper conceptualizes multi-sectoral contexts by focusing on practical effects that differ in terms of visibility, comparability and timeliness. It further advances the idea of useful, rather than truthful, representation of complex contexts. The second paper examines the shift to participation and downward accountability in refugee crises. It outlines how downward accountability realizes its moral responsibility in an acute crisis, but betrays it over time as displacement prolongs. We conceptualize the dynamics of downward accountability as inclusive as well as exclusive, suggesting that participatory practices of downward accountability might reinforce refugees as marginalized others as displacement prolongs. The third paper follows this more critical stance by examining how the predominant solution to refugee crises, encampment, enacts and intensifies displacement over time. Contributing to the notion of wicked problems, this paper specifies the underlying practices of such problems' inherent intractability, referring to temporal and spatial containment. The paper however also sheds light on dynamics of temporal and spatial diffusion that assist in de-intensifying global wicked problems. The dissertation concludes with two overarching contributions that sketch opportunities for future research and reflects on the impact and implications of research on today's global social challenges.

Tackling grand challenges such as anthropogenic climate change, urgently requires an increase in bio-based resource utilization in regard to offsetting fossil dependencies within industrial sectors, also known as bioeconomic shifts. Bioeconomic shifts can be achieved by implementing Mission-oriented innovation (MOI), which concerns facilitating and directing resources towards achieving predetermined missions. Public actors within Uppsala region have proposed a regional mission which communicates their approach towards achieving a bioeconomic shift. Therefore, this study explores the empirical and contextual barriers to MOI- implementation towards increasing local bio-based rest flow utilization, enabling an expansion biochar within Uppsala region. To satisfy the purpose and research question, an inductive qualitative interview-based case study was performed. This allowed for an understanding of contextual barriers regarding an implementation of MOI from the perceptions of the purposefully sampled interviewees. Thematic analysis was then applied to uncover codes and themes within the gathered data. Noteworthy, and a valuable takeaway for future studies regarding MOI-implementations, is that many of the observed barriers could be mitigated through further developing abilities that enable codification of tacit knowledge. Difficulties in facilitating necessary cooptation, uncertainty associated with innovation, and lengthy payback horizons contribute to MOI-implementation barriers within Uppsala region. A lack of structures that enable the synchronization of, and cooperation between, public and private actors has resulted in barriers for public actors to incentivize and facilitate activities towards achieving a regional expansion of biochar. Also, a lack of resource allocation to enable an MOI-implementation, results in barriers towards exploiting/counteracting contextual advantages/disadvantages towards achieving the regional mission. Contextual advantages include mobility of knowledgeable individuals, universities, and waste management facilities. Contextual disadvantages regard insufficient resource allocations, lack of public actor involvement, and policy which is currently unable of facilitating necessary activities. The results and associated theory support the notion that innovation policy should communicate routes and directions, and better organize actors and activities towards specific missions. Increasing the ability to assess previous and future MOI-implementations, while incentivizing cooperation through shared risks and rewards. Increased communication and assessments of MOI-implementations could also increase the ability to further develop contextual advantages. Contributing and expanding upon existing MOI-literature, this study emphasizes codification of knowledge as to increase the transferability of MOI-related policies and activities between, and within domains. Increased transferability could entail positive spillover effects, regarding the ability of actors to learn from successful, and non-successful MOI-related activities. This knowledge could increase the success rate of MOI-implementations, thus increasing the ability to further develop MOI-implementation frameworks.

La perspective d’un développement durable, si nous nous référons à l’accentuation de l’ensemble des phénomènes qu’il était supposé endiguer depuis son entrée en scène il y a une quarantaine d’années, semble devoir être à nouveau questionnée. Par la même, ceci nous invite à douter de la capacité des États et des entreprises à répondre seuls aux enjeux qu’il soulève. En ce sens, notre recherche, d’inspiration qualitative et interprétativiste, va s’intéresser à la diffusion récente de cette perspective auprès d’associations non nativement impliquées sur le sujet. Ceci afin d’étudier ce que les représentations et les préconisations de ces acteurs, concernant des enjeux qui dépassent le cadre de leur objet social, sont susceptibles de lui apporter. Nous plaçant dans le cadre des sciences de gestion, nous nous intéresserons dans le même temps aux dispositifs de gestion qui, au sein de ces organisations, exercent une influence sur leurs représentations et, par extension, sur leurs actions. Une double perspective théorique sera mobilisée pour cela. D'un côté, la théorie de la structuration développée par Anthony Giddens, qui nous permettra de conjuguer habilement des aspects à la fois très globaux, propres à des systèmes sociaux, et individuels. De l’autre, les travaux de Boaventura De Sousa Santos qui nous obligeront en permanence à faire un pas de côté par rapport à ce qui apparaît comme prédominant et devoir prédominer. / The perspective of sustainable development – if we refer to the accentuation of the phenomena that it was supposed to contain since its emergence forty years ago – seems to have to be questioned again. Thereby, invite us to doubt about the capability of states and companies to respond alone to the grand challenges it raises. In this sense, our qualitative and interpretative research will focus on the recent diffusion of this perspective among associations which are non-natively involved on the matter. This would serve to study what the representations and recommendations of these actors, concerning issues which go beyond their social purpose, are likely to bring to it. By placing ourselves in the context of management sciences, we will at the same time be interested in the management systems that, within these organizations, have an influence on their representations, and by extension on their actions. A double theoretical perspective will be mobilized to that purpose. On the one hand, the theory of structuration developed by Anthony Giddens, will allow us to skillfully combine aspects that are both very global, specific to social systems, and individual. On the other hand, the work of Boaventura De Sousa Santos, will require us to constantly step aside from what appears predominant and must prevail.