The great reset of management and organization theory. A European perspective

In mid-2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF) announced the Great Reset, an initiative launched to assert, describe, and shape the direction of an epochal transition brought about by the global coronavirus crisis. Rooted in a European tradition of social theory, this article aims to articulate the bro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEuropean management journal Vol. 39; no. 5; pp. 538 - 544
Main Author Roth, Steffen
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.10.2021
Elsevier Science Ltd
Subjects
Alternatives
COVID-19
Digital transformation
Economic impact
Great reset initiative
Healthicization
Multifunctional organization
Normality
Organization theory
Reductionism
Risk factors
Social environment
Social trends
Studies
Transformation
Great reset initiative
Healthicization
Digital transformation
Multifunctional organization
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Summary:In mid-2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF) announced the Great Reset, an initiative launched to assert, describe, and shape the direction of an epochal transition brought about by the global coronavirus crisis. Rooted in a European tradition of social theory, this article aims to articulate the broader social context of this scenario and pinpoint its implications for management and organization theory. One of these implications is that our fields face a significant risk of co-performing rather than studying the looming “great transformation” from an economy-to a health-dominated society, thus merely replacing one reductionism with another. It follows that what is required are management and organization theories that analyze rather than ride the macro social trends that shape organizations and their environments. The article concludes that if crises are the golden moments of alternative mainstreams, then for those interested in alternatives to the emerging “new normality” the golden moment to develop the next alternative mainstream theories is now.
ISSN:0263-2373
1873-5681
DOI:10.1016/j.emj.2021.05.005