Essay by Ali Aslan Gümüsay & Juliane ReineckeResearching (for) desirable futures: How can we theorize what does not exist?

6 July 2021, by CSS

Photo: Wiley

In an essay in the Journal of Management Studies, CSS member Ali Aslan Gümüsay and co-researcher Juliane Reinecke argue for the need to reclaim the societal relevance of scholars by redefining their purpose in engaging with the future and articulate desirable futures, and how they might become reality. In their essay, they have a look at how to do this while maintaining scholarly rigor and facing the paradox that empirical social science deals with the social world as it exists and its methodological tools are based on data sourced from observable events that have already occurred.

How can scholars study, conceptualize, and theorize what is not (yet) observable and does not (yet) exist? How can they overcome certain limitations of empirical methods to actively feed forward soci(et)al change as academics?

To see what they have come up with to solve this conundrum, you can access the whole essay in the Journal of Management Studies here [Open Access].