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2025 AOM Annual Meeting

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SIM

18334: Real Utopias for Organizational Governance: Exploring Alternatives to the Corporation

Monday, July 28, 2025
10:15 - 11:45 CEST (GMT+2)
Location: Bella Center: MR179
Session Type: Symposium (panel)
Orientation: Research
Highlight: Showcase Symposium
Shareable link: https://cdmcd.co/7bpDqr
As management scholars grapple with grand societal challenges, there is a growing interest in imagining and exploring alternative forms of organizing. This symposium aims to advance the conversation on “real utopias” - radical yet plausible alternatives to the dominant social order that exist at the margins of society. Unlike previous approaches that either speculatively imagine alternatives or use marginal cases to inform mainstream organizations, we propose connecting the marginal cases and facilitating a conversation across empirical contexts whose practical and transformative implications have too often been constricted within theoretical silos. Inspired by Erik Olin Wright’s Real Utopias Project, this symposium brings together researchers studying radical alternatives to the shareholder-owned, profit-driven corporation. Our panel of scholars represents a range of divisions, and their work spans diverse empirical contexts including amongst others DAOs, cooperatives, social movements, indigenous groups, and religious communities. We propose that each of these disparate contexts constitute a piece of a larger puzzle - namely, what elements of imagined “desirable futures” are in fact viable, sustainable, and attainable for organizations here and now? This symposium will showcase different “real utopias” for governing organizations, followed by a facilitated comparative discussion. Our aim is to identify patterns across these cases, stimulate critical thinking about organizational forms, and potentially inspire new directions in management research and practice that take the margins seriously.