1053: Agency at the Crossroads: New Paths, Problems, and Perspectives for a Central Concept (19727)

Our assumptions of agency characterize how we as scholars understand and research leadership, strategy, entrepreneurship, and technological changes, to name just a few. The concept of agency is central to creating, changing, and dealing with challenges ranging from minor issues to societal grand challenges. Although ubiquitous in organization research and an undercurrent in management theory and practice, agency remains largely under-theorized. As societies and organizations face wicked problems – e.g., societal grand challenges, inequity, mental health – bringing agency into the foreground can help scholars develop new perspectives and conceptual insights about how actors can be creative agents, change and enact change, and respond to challenges (Battilana, Yen, Ferreras, & Ramarajan, 2022; Sewell, 1992). Furthermore, the stories we pay attention to and the angles from which we study organizations as management scholars often favor agentic elements. For example, how peripheral and central actors instigate change at organizational or field levels (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005), how entrepreneurs develop intentions, or managers strategize (Hengst, Jarzabkowski, Hoegl, & Muethel, 2020; Jarzabkowski, Bednarek, Chalkias, & Cacciatori, 2018) are all tightly connected to what it means to be an agent. Our interpretations and lenses may propel a particular view of agency. Scholars advancing the agential realism perspective argue that how we measure and observe shapes our perception of agency (Barad, 2007). For example, actor- network theory highlights that agency is not limited to humans and can extend to non-human entities such as objects and technologies (Latour, 2005). These perspectives are underpinned by researchers’ assumptions and their ontological, epistemological, and methodological orientations (Gioia, 2022). Moreover, separate from the nature or ontology of agency are its causes and consequences. The diversity of organizational research examining a wide range of phenomena of creativity, change, and challenges across different contexts and theoretical lenses can yield new insights about the nature, causes, and consequences of human agency. As organization scholars, we can leverage the diversity of organizational research streams to develop fresh perspectives and nuances on agency. For this symposium, we invited scholars representing a broad range of perspectives to offer diverse insights on agency from different research streams in management and organization studies. Our expert panel will provide insights from processual and relational ontology, leadership and complexity, strategy and technology, and neuroscience.