Caring, Courage and Curiosity: Reflections on our roles as scholars in organizing for a sustainable future

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic made important societal issues even more pressing and poignant to organizations. I explore how the pandemic surfaced attention to the vulnerability and resilience of organizations and organizing, and reflect on our responsibility as organizational scholars to think and act differently about our work as a result. I consider how we might do this individually and collectively, arriving at suggestions for how to advance organization theory and its relevance to contemporary organizing through: (1) directing our care to multiple issues that need attention; (2) having the courage to step away from familiar modes of inquiry and styles of theorizing to explore these; and (3) using our curiosity to develop nuanced explanations that match the complex, systemic nature of the issues themselves.