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Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Enacting a grand challenge for business and society: Theorizing issue maturation in the media-based public discourse on COVID-19 in three national contexts
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Bennet Schwoon
  • Dennis Schoeneborn
  • Andreas Scherer
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title Business & Society
Publisher Sage Publications
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 0007-6503
Volume 63
Number 4
Page Range 869 - 919
Date 2024
Abstract Text 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.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1177/00076503221110486
Other Identification Number merlin-id:23477
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Keywords COVID-19, discourse quality, framing dynamics, grand societal challenges, social problem work
Additional Information CC BY-NC 4.0