Happy New Year!
Articles featured in the January 2026 and October 2025 issues of the Journal of Management Inquiry are accessible via open access through February 2026.
Volume 35 Issue 1, January 2026
CURATED
A Critical Examination of Corporate Environmental and Social Impact Measurement and Valuation
Judith Stroehle, Ali Aslan Gümüşay, Laura Marie Edinger Schons, Amyn Vogal, Alnoor Ebrahim, Andreas Rasche, Andrew King, Ken Pucker, Richard Barker, Juliane Reinecke, Giovanna Michelon, Stuart Cooper, Dror Etzion, Karim Harji, Marya Besharov, Colin Mayer, Nien-hê Hsieh, and Emma van den Terrell
Volume 35, Issue 1, January 2026, Pages 3-18
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10564926251330815
Can measuring and valuing the impact of business on society and the planet lead to a more environmentally and socially oriented style of capitalism? This is the main hope and assertion of corporate environmental and social impact measurement and valuation (IMV), which calls on organizations to measure their positive and negative impacts on their stakeholders and the environment and to subsequently translate them into monetary units. This curated dialog critically examines the components of this concept-environmental and social impact, its measurement, and its monetary valuation-by bringing together leading experts in the field who discuss the opportunities and risks of IMV. The purpose of this article is to place IMV under deep investigation and envision new ways that work with, complement, or replace organizations' desire for management via quantification and financialization.
Keywords: business and society, corporate social responsibility, sustainability
ESSAY
Is Serendipity Serendipitous?
Henry Mintzberg
Volume 35, Issue 1, January 2026, Pages 19-21
https://doi.org/10.1177/10564926251365863
Serendipity may not be as serendipitous as we believe when we take into account the odds of some unexpected event happening, even if not the particular event that does happen. Consider, for example, the frequency of chance encounters that can lead to opportunities when attending a conference. Therefore, rather than being surprised by serendipity, we should expect it, and thus manage it, for example, by spending less time on e-calls and more time around the coffee machine, where serendipity can flourish.
Keywords: affect/emotions, creativity, identity, innovation, paradox
EMPIRICAL
Societal Duty or Pragmatic Paradox? Exploring Midwives' Experiences of Contradictory Work Demands During COVID-19 Lockdowns
James Greenslade-Yeats, Tago L. Mharapara, Janine H. Clemons, and Talei Jackson
Volume 35, Issue 1, January 2026, Pages 22-46
https://doi.org/10.1177/10564926241301024
We theorize how the nested-ness and knotted-ness of a pragmatic paradox shapes the experience of ensuing tensions. Our theorization draws on a qualitative, abductive study of essential workers (midwives) who were forced to accept contradictory work demands during COVID-19 lockdowns. Midwives experienced these demands as performing tensions stemming from an interconnected need to both protect wellbeing and risk wellbeing in their professional roles. In turn, midwives' performing tensions were knotted with belonging tensions and nested within organizing tensions faced by societal leaders. Surprisingly, we found that although most midwives experienced contradictory and unrefusable demands as a disempowering pragmatic paradox, some experienced the same demands as a motivating duty. The crux was how midwives interpreted the alignment between knotted performing and belonging tensions. Our research provides a more nuanced view of how workers "live through" pragmatic paradoxes and offers insights into the complex interplay between power asymmetries and multi-level, interwoven paradoxes.
Keywords: qualitative methods, tensions, paradox, health care
Pet Peeves and Sensemaking at Work
Joshua Knapp, Marcia Lensges, and Nathan Tong
Volume 35, Issue 1, January 2026, Pages 47-60
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/KYVZDRKDPJENRWIUCKII/full
While individuals intuitively understand what pet peeves are, academic research lacks a full explanation of their nature and consequences. We begin addressing this issue by adopting a sensemaking perspective in an inductive interview-based study providing a foundation for future research in two significant ways. First, we establish a more precise definition of pet peeves as a self-centered annoyance containing personalized cognitive and affective components. The cognitive component is grounded in individuals' values and expectations and defines the "what" of a pet peeve. The affective component defines the latent aversion attached to prospective violations of those values and expectations. Second, we develop a theoretical model of the pet peeves sensemaking process that incorporates the four sensemaking types described by Sandberg and Tsoukas. As a whole, this work represents an important first step toward establishing pet peeves as formal academic concept.
Keywords: sensemaking, organizational behavior, qualitative research, attitudes
Motivation Bathroom the Best Bathroom: Doing Community Through Graffiti-Writing in a Liminal Space
Siiri Piironen
Volume 35, Issue 1, January 2026, Pages 61-75
https://doi.org/10.1177/10564926241302728
This article draws attention to a seldomly studied use of organizational space and examines how bathroom graffiti-writing produces a liminal community of care and kind motivating within a Finnish university. I explore an empirical case in which graffiti-writers of a specific bathroom, the "motivation bathroom," have become informally organized around a shared cause without ever meeting or getting to know each other. Conceptualizing bathrooms as solitary liminal spaces, I examine how various forms of communitas are embedded in the "motivation bathroom" graffiti and how this experience of togetherness enables the graffiti-writers to sustain their shared message of care and kind motivating. The study advances the research on smaller scale organizational liminal spaces and proposes that future management and organizations studies would benefit from a wider use of the concept of communitas. The article also joins the emerging stream of micro-level material studies of work and organizing.
Keywords: bathroom graffiti, communitas, community, informal organizing, liminality, liminal space, micro-level material studies
REFLECTIONS ON EXPERIENCE
Feeling Out of Place When Seeking Research Access? Reflexivity Through Affective Spacing
Inti José Lammi, Anette Hallin, and Chris Ivory
Volume 35, Issue 1, January 2026, Pages 76-89
https://doi.org/10.1177/10564926251360961
In this paper, we propose that drawing on our "feeling of being out of place" when seeking research access can be a valuable source for methodological reflexivity. Drawing on the concept of affective spacing, we examine why and how "feelings of being out of place" emerge as we approach research settings, what emerges as matters of concern in this process and what insights attending to these feelings can provide. We conclude by discussing the revelatory and consequential implications that affective spacing can have for our research. This, we argue, can also help better prepare qualitative scholars to acknowledge and navigate their own involvement in their research.
Keywords: qualitative research, qualitative methods, affect/emotions, process thinking
PROVOCATIONS & PROVOCATEURS
"I'm not that Kind of Doctor": Experiential Learning as the Student Mental Health & Wellbeing Superpower
Kathy Lund Dean
Volume 35, Issue 1, January 2026, Pages 90-92
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/AXDYZGQ9TS2VVASNQ9DK/full
By any measure and in every higher education context, university students need more mental health and wellbeing (SMHW) care and support. Institutional mental health clinical capacity cannot keep up with student demand, and misguided university leaders advocate increasingly for educators to serve as SMHW "first responders" or "front lines" supporters. In this article I argue that institutional leadership should stop expecting, assuming or pretending that educators are mental health experts and that educators themselves should refuse to serve in this quasi-clinical capacity. As a sustainable and ethical alternative, I show how experiential learning connects educators with positive SMHW outcomes through fostering relational skills development. Experiential educators can enable mental health-supporting outcomes with learning opportunities we already employ. I end with four actions that experiential educators should take, staying out of a health provider role.
Keywords: student mental health, student wellbeing, experiential learning, relational skills, life skills, soft skills, emotional regulation, experiential pedagogy, core skills, faculty as clinician
Volume 34 Issue 4, October 2025
CURATED
The Crisis of Care: A Curated Discussion
Lotte Bailyn, Julia B. Bear, Christine M. Beckman, Inga Carboni, Judith Clair, Ans De Vos, Gina Dokko, Joyce K. Fletcher, Douglas T. (Tim) Hall, Brad Harrington, Claudia Goldin, Erin L. Kelly, Ellen Ernst Kossek, Meg Lovejoy, Melissa Mazmanian, Lakshmi Ramarajan, Erin M. Reid, Nancy P. Rothbard, Pamela Stone, Njoke Thomas, Beatrice I. J. M. Van der Heijden, Steffanie Wilk, and Sarah Wittman
Volume 34, Issue 4, October 2025, Pages 351-377
https://doi.org/10.1177/10564926241311511
Caregiving and career have been primarily studied by management scholars for their incompatibility. Largely ignored have been the consequences of this approach for the lives of workers. Yet the need for both childcare and eldercare is on the rise, women are increasingly integrated into the workforce, and, for many, retirement is being delayed. Particularly in the United States, workers and their families are experiencing a crisis of care. In this curated piece, we identify-and aim to dismantle-four myths that have allowed management research and practice to segment care and work. Contributors bring economics, feminist theory, sociology, organizational behavior, and careers perspectives to provide a broader vision both of the problem and of how management research might advance toward theoretical and practical solutions.
Keywords: boundary work, caregiving, crisis of care, embodiment of work, gender, greedy work, sustainable careers, work–life balance, work-life integration
ESSAY
When Does It Become Overkill and Exploitation?
Jone Pearce and Cornelia (Connie) Pechmann
Volume 34, Issue 4, October 2025, Pages 378-384
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/YU7J6X68FVEZRTRFYVRG/full
This essay is intended to foster reflection and action on the impact of the escalating changes in journal publication practices on our PhD students and junior colleagues. Based on our experiences and observations, we argue that journals, at least in management (first author) and marketing (second author) that accept empirical research, are demanding ever-increasing amounts of data, duplicative studies, and methodological elaborations for publication, and that these are having a detrimental impact on our PhD students, our junior colleagues and, ultimately, the future of our fields. We argue that expecting ever more work of our students and junior colleagues and not adequately weighing costs versus benefits is not fair nor professional.
Keywords: management education, careers, justice/fairness
EMPIRICAL
"It Had to Be Us": The Rudolph Effect and the Inclusion of Unconventional Leaders
Andrew Webb and Amélie Cloutier
Volume 34, Issue 4, October 2025, Pages 385-400
https://doi.org/10.1177/10564926241266501
More insights are needed about how to overcome situations where conventional leadership breaks down. By teasing apart concepts and processes associated with the inclusion of unconventional leaders, Greimas and Courtès' actantial model is leveraged to collate the relationships threaded by the actors involved with the 2018 rescue mission of the Wild Boars soccer team in Thailand. What we label as the Rudolph Effect describes how outcasts, misfits, and mavericks can be redefined as valuable members of a leadership team. This case study suggests that providing opportunities for unconventional team members to demonstrate their skills and capital allows them to shift from supporting or advisory roles to more decisional and leadership roles. Both theoretical and practical managerial tools that facilitate the development and inclusion of unconventional leaders are provided.
Keywords: inclusion, leadership, organizational behaviour, top management teams/upper echelon
Managing Social Impact Bonds: Intermediary Work and Designing Institutional Infrastructure
Danielle Logue, Markus A. Höllerer, Stewart Clegg, Reinhard Millner, and Jonas Jebabli
Volume 34, Issue 4, October 2025, Pages 401-415
https://doi.org/10.1177/10564926241274328
Collaborations addressing grand challenges seek social impact; whether such social innovations will endure beyond initial enthusiasm is a major issue. Over the last decade, Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) emerged to diffuse globally as a new form of cross sector collaboration to finance solutions for social problems. Crucially, SIBs rely on intermediary organizations to coordinate and govern relations across diverse actors with competing and conflicting interests and values. How an intermediary goes about this work has significant effects on whether the collaboration achieves the desired social impact and whether it endures. In this article, we examine the intermediary work that enables such a cross-sector collaboration by analyzing two of the first completed SIBs in Continental Europe. Our findings identify three main types of interweaving intermediary work of aligning, stitching, and knotting, that are supported by three distinct forms of institutional infrastructure (ideational, operational, and relational respectively) providing a significant contribution to the analysis of cross-sector collaboration by connecting intermediary work to institutional infrastructure.
Keywords: institutional complexity, institutional infrastructure, cross-sector collaboration, business & society, social impact bonds, intermediary, social innovation
Community Socioemotional Wealth as the Glue that Binds Distinct Communities in Enterprising: A Tale of Success from Colombia
Sonia S. Siraz, Björn Claes, Deycy J. Sanchez Preciado, and Nicholas Theodorakopoulos
Volume 34, Issue 4, October 2025, Pages 416-438
https://doi.org/10.1177/10564926241285798
Recent advances in research have shed light on why and how community-based enterprises (CBEs) emerge. Nevertheless, little is known about the underlying factors that contribute to their success over time. This lack of attention is intriguing, given CBEs' widespread proliferation as an instrument for socioeconomic development. We contribute to the CBE literature by applying and extending socioemotional wealth (SEW) to the CBE context. Our findings demonstrate how the presence of community socioemotional wealth (CSEW) enables CBEs to achieve enduring success. Beyond the presence of SEW's five traditional dimensions, we identify two new dimensions (empowerment and holistic mission) unique to CBEs. When jointly present, these seven dimensions explain how CSEW creates a favorable terrain for the CBE to succeed.
Keywords: community-based enterprises, developing countries, entrepreneurship, socioemotional wealth, indigenous communities, rural development, Colombia
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Richard Stackman
Professor
University of San Francisco
San Francisco CA
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