A Call to Organizational Scholarship

Abstract

The organization dimensions of global change represent afresh arena of organizational scholarship demanded by the global exigencies of our moment in history, a moment where, for the first time, the scale and character of human action has measurable impacts on the natural environment, as well as societal transformations and our collective consciousness. This article lays an intellectual foundation for such work, first by reviewing three extant domains of global-change research in environmental change, social change, and the transformation of consciousness, then by articulating the call for the organizational sciences to extend existing knowledge and future research streams into these vital areas. The authors stipulate that the scope of global challenges will demand untold amounts of human cooperation, inquiry into the potential of which has only begun, especially at the global and interorganizational levels. They offer the proposition that there are no necessary limits to cooperation but suggest that the realization of this potential may require opening our epistemic stance to more expansive forms of knowing than Western science has traditionally embraced. The authors conclude by advancing a preliminary set of thematic topics, questions, and normative assertions that suggest fruitful avenues of research into the organization dimensions of global change, which themselves are seeds for a special Academy of Management Conference on "The Organization Dimensions of Global Change: No Limits to Cooperation" to be held in May 1995.