Organizing Societal Transformation: A Process-Based Perspective

• Applicant: Dr. Laura Fey-Kreuzer
• Subject Area: Management and Marketing
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 577697856

Climate change, social inequality, and technological advancements all contribute to and necessitate societal transformation: deep-rooted changes that permanently alter societal structures and systems. Organizations are key in this transformation because they have to respond to pressures arising from societal challenges, put forward solutions, and wield significant resources to influence the initiatives of others through affirmation, contestation, or resistance. Although existing management research has explored organizations’ role in societal transformation, it tends to focus separately on organizations as drivers of or respondents to transformation. This separation provides analytical clarity but risks underspecifying societal transformation evolves over time and missing the rich and dynamic interplay of varied organizational efforts in this process. In light of this, our network will develop a process-based perspective on organizing societal transformation, which will integrate and connect the currently largely separate research foci of understanding organizations as either drivers of or respondents to transformation. Our network’s process-theoretical lens will thus shift the analytical focus of societal transformation research to intertwined organizational processes of driving and responding to societal transformations, foregrounding the recursive, interconnected, and continuous nature of multiple, overlapping transformation dynamics. Our network aims to (1) build a community of engaged scholars developing the process-based perspective on organizing societal transformation, (2) synthesize existing insight on societal transformation and enrich them with process research to set an international research agenda, and (3) lay the foundation for scaling network members’ efforts, incl. through the development of an edited volume and impulses for future funding applications. This is particularly important because shaping the future of societal transformation research in the way that our network envisions exceeds the scope of a single study and requires the concerted efforts of a network of scholars. To achieve these goals, we plan to hold five network-meetings during which internationally established scholars support developing our research agenda by bringing in different perspectives and providing feedback on network members' research. During each meeting, we will invite at least one guest with a focus on the phenomenon of societal transformation and one guest with expertise in process research. Each event facilitates in-depth discussions, knowledge exchange, and collaborative research development.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks