Enacting a Grand Challenge for Business and Society: Theorizing Issue Maturation in the Media-Based Public Discourse on COVID-19 in Three National Contexts
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In: Business and Society, Vol. 63, No. 4, 04.2024, p. 869-919.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Enacting a Grand Challenge for Business and Society
T2 - Theorizing Issue Maturation in the Media-Based Public Discourse on COVID-19 in Three National Contexts
AU - Schwoon, Bennet
AU - Schoeneborn, Dennis
AU - Scherer, Andreas Georg
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2024/4
Y1 - 2024/4
N2 - While today it is universally acknowledged that COVID-19 has generated immense challenges for businesses and societies worldwide, public perceptions varied significantly at the time of the pandemic’s initial appearance, even among democratic societies with comparable media systems. The growing scholarship on grand societal challenges in management and organization studies, however, tends to neglect the initial social construction of issues as complex, uncertain, evaluative, and widespread. We address this shortcoming by exploring the initial communicative enactment of COVID-19 in the media-based public discourse in Switzerland, Germany, and the United Kingdom. By applying a social problem work lens, we identify three mechanisms that explain the maturation of COVID-19 into a grand challenge, further showing how these are contextually dependent on differences in discourse quality. We add to research on grand challenges, issue maturation, and framing dynamics by theorizing how issues become constructed and acknowledged as grand challenges in the first place.
AB - While today it is universally acknowledged that COVID-19 has generated immense challenges for businesses and societies worldwide, public perceptions varied significantly at the time of the pandemic’s initial appearance, even among democratic societies with comparable media systems. The growing scholarship on grand societal challenges in management and organization studies, however, tends to neglect the initial social construction of issues as complex, uncertain, evaluative, and widespread. We address this shortcoming by exploring the initial communicative enactment of COVID-19 in the media-based public discourse in Switzerland, Germany, and the United Kingdom. By applying a social problem work lens, we identify three mechanisms that explain the maturation of COVID-19 into a grand challenge, further showing how these are contextually dependent on differences in discourse quality. We add to research on grand challenges, issue maturation, and framing dynamics by theorizing how issues become constructed and acknowledged as grand challenges in the first place.
KW - COVID-19
KW - discourse quality
KW - framing dynamics
KW - grand societal challenges
KW - social problem work
KW - Management studies
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85135166310&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/c4fb7e74-22dd-3a71-b6b0-fe2e56a85987/
U2 - 10.1177/00076503221110486
DO - 10.1177/00076503221110486
M3 - Journal articles
C2 - 38529203
AN - SCOPUS:85135166310
VL - 63
SP - 869
EP - 919
JO - Business and Society
JF - Business and Society
SN - 0007-6503
IS - 4
ER -