Executives increasingly face challenges that cannot be solved at the level of a single firm. Climate disruption, resource constraints, and social instability are not competitive problems. They are system-level conditions that shape the viability of entire sectors.

27.05.2026 / Thomas Gauthier & Amanda Williams

Our field, Management and Organization Studies, is marked by a deep and pervasive depoliticization. We strip contexts of their political content, treat them as neutral backdrops for empirical inquiry rather than as sites of struggle, power, and morality, and we do this in the name of value-neutrality and rigor. 

18.03.2026 / Farah Kodeih

In this blog post, we follow a conversation between two early-career researchers, Diana Borniotto and Océane Duluins, as they grapple with a timely and often contentious question: Can (and should) science be apolitical? 

19.02.2026 / Diana Borniotto, Océane Duluins

Can science be free from ideology? Should it be? Philosophers of science have long debated whether research can – or should – be value-neutral. We acknowledge that complete neutrality is impossible: Our values shape what we study and how we interpret findings. 

10.02.2026 / Paul Spector, Logan Steele

A pyromaniac in a fire-station. That’s how I felt writing a PhD on degrowth in an economics department. I still remember the bewildered face of the department director during our first meeting. To a development economist trained in neoclassical theory, the idea of downscaling production and consumption to reduce ecological footprints sounds as outrageous as it gets.  

23.09.2025 / Timothée Parrique

By 2040, AI-driven data centers are projected to consume up to 8% of global emissions. Could we use artificial intelligence (AI) to power climate solutions, or is AI fueling a deeper crisis? On June 5, 2025, an interdisciplinary panel hosted by the HEC Lausanne Research Center on Grand Challenges offered answers to this hotly debated question.

22.09.2025 / Axelle Miel, Christof Brandtner

The world is in profound trouble as mounting military conflicts and accelerating ecological crises set us up for a century of uncertainty. To find orientation in tumultuous times, in the past, society has looked up to one specific institution: science. 

28.04.2025 / The Editorial Team

Utopia is not an appropriate term to reflect on the idea of autonomy. Utopia is a ‘mystifying’ term. If utopia ‘is something that does not and cannot happen’, then to frame autonomy as a utopia is self-defeating. It implies that autonomy does not and cannot happen.

11.04.2025 / Esteban Arcos

I have been exploring alternative agricultures in Morocco and Switzerland through ethnographic research methods. Despite working explicitly on quiet alternativity – concrete agro­ecological and everyday practices with potentially ben­eficial socio-ecological outcomes, which are however not promoted, experienced or described as ‘alternative’ or ‘dis­ruptive’ by the people who practise them.

27.02.2025 / Andrea Mathez

Néo-farmers (fr. Néo-paysan-ne-s) are farmers who do not come from an agricultural background, who inherited neither land nor a farm from their family. They dispose of motivations to transform towards more sustainable agroecological systems, their trajectories question dual categories of urban-rural, and they cast doubt on linear pathways of ‘progress’ as a universally desirable. 

03.01.2025 / Mathilde Vandaele

Today’s interdependent and aggravating social-ecological crises warrant a profound rethinking of our economic system. “Putting people and planet before profit” must not stay a slogan but become a reality. To make this happen, it is pivotal to challenge hitherto dominant paradigms, including economic growth as a dominant goal of economic activity and measure of welfare as well as ‘the market’ as most suitable mechanism of economic coordination. 

29.11.2024 / Matthias Schmelzer, Elena Hofferberth

The advent of polycrisis, the intersecting, intertwined set of civilization threatening crises now facing humanity, signals a significant shift in how ‘leadership’ should be understood and practiced. 

14.10.2024 / Sandra Waddock

After the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015, the clock is ticking down to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Numerous companies are pledging Net Zero commitments, but their level of ambition and transparency varies greatly. 

17.09.2024 / Igor Shishlov, Zuriñe Bidaurreta

Business scholars have taught generations of students and executives how to create and capture value. Among the richest that have mastered that doctrine are the Big Tech firms with their digital platforms. They have captured dominant market positions that cannot be easily contested, with antitrust regulation and enforcement failing to restrain them. 

16.07.2024 / Dovev Lavie

At the 28^th Conference of the Parties (COP28) of the UN’s climate regime, most countries agreed to triple installed renewables (RE) capacity by 2030. This has been widely considered to signal the “beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era.

09.07.2024 / Max Schmidt

Climate change calls for intergenerational decision-making. The negative consequences of not acting on grand challenges fall disproportionately on future generations, while the benefits largely accrue to the current generation, such as the benefit of avoiding significant financial and psychological costs of change.

02.07.2024 / Ewa Lombard, Cecile Biccari

In his ingenious book ‘The Ministry for the Future’, novelist Kim Stanley Robinson popularized the genre ‘climate fiction’ and visualized both the horrors of a world under accelerated climate change but also the creative human potential to deal with it. 

17.04.2024 / The Editorial Team

On November 16 2023, Wouter was invited to a Breakfast Research and Practice seminar hosted by the Research Center for Grand Challenges at HEC Lausanne. The aim was to share his experiences and pioneering thoughts on the integration of the intangibles of the sustainability agenda to be able to help accelerating sustainability transitions in business and society. 

15.04.2024 / Wouter Savrij Droste

From Syria to Libya, Somalia to Yemen, today more than 50 nations are categorised as fragile states. With a number sitting very close to the EU’s borders, it’s impossible to argue that these countries and the difficulties they face exist in a vacuum from the rest of the world.

01.02.2024 / Dominic Rohner

Emerging technologies are constantly evolving and shape how we organize work within organizations. Building upon design principles of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), our Point of View article explores how one application of blockchain technology offers novel avenues for organizing in the future of work. 

08.01.2024 / Patrick Nicolas Tinguely, Yash Raj Shrestha

On October 12th, Guillaume and Mark were invited to a Breakfast Research and Practice seminar hosted by the Research Center for Grand Challenges at HEC Lausanne. The aim was to share their experience and thoughts about the place of technology and digital solutions to help solve the challenges associated with access to water in emerging countries and to highlight the practical steps for water operators. 

12.12.2023 / Mark McCormick, Guillaume Fery

We often hear that we as consumers have the responsibility and the power to support reaching the Sustainable Development Goals with our consumption decisions. This might be possible if firms would be completely transparent about the environmental impact of their products. However, what if we lack adequate information?

29.11.2023 / Lukas von Flüe