Academy of Management

AMP Open Call for Papers
2026-01-01 00:00 - 2027-01-31 23:59 (America/New_York)
Submission Deadline: 31 January 2026

Submit to AMP

ATTENTION! Please disengage the autopilot. Check the muscle memory. We do not want more of the same. Academy of Management Perspectives (AMP) is different.

Are you thinking of submitting a manuscript to AMP? We appreciate your interest. We have a terrific global team of engaged editors eagerly awaiting the opportunity to help develop your work. But please send us papers that fit our unique mission.

AMP publishes papers that matter to managers. Our field has called for managerially relevant work for decades. AMP is here to help realize this important goal. Problem is, our field is not accustomed to relevance. And so out of habit, many send us papers that don’t fit our mission.

If your paper is theory driven, it is NOT suited to AMP. AMP is a journal of first choice for papers that inform managerial practice and policy. We are not a backstop for papers that miss at AMJ, AMR, or other top theory-driven journals. It’s not enough to add managerial implications onto a paper rejected at such journals. AMP papers must be managerially driven from the start.

Do the contents of your paper inform the practice of management in a specific and significant way? After reading your paper, did we learn something new and meaningful about an important aspect of how to manage and govern an organization? Does your paper provide evidence ample to drive managers (including policy makers) to reconsider a particular practice? We will assess your paper by these criteria, and so should you. But be as honest and objective about the relevance of your work as possible. Don’t fool yourself with vague sentiment about broad influence on generic aspects of management. Ask others for their views of your work – especially practitioners. Consider co-authoring with practitioners. But understand: If it is not relevant to managers, then it is not relevant to AMP.

While relevance is our most prominent characteristic, it does not come at the expense of rigor. AMP does NOT publish papers that lack rigorous original analysis. Though our mission differs, our analytical standards are the same as those of other elite journals. Opinions, overviews, descriptive arguments, philosophical treatise, etc. are not within our purview, even if they convey interesting perspectives on management. The managers who rely on AMP content need evidence, not conjecture. So, the claims of an AMP paper must be supported with stringent scholarly analysis. This robust analysis may be empirical (quantitative or qualitative) or conceptual.

Finally, AMP does NOT use the exact same format as other AOM journals. Yes, the fonts and indents and all that good stuff are the same. But because AMP papers must be accessible to a non-specialized audience, we do a few things differently. For one, we use endnotes. For another, we place detailed analyses in supplements and only summarize them in the body of the paper. This allows AMP manuscripts to run about 20 body pages in length, not the standard 30+. We also favor plain language over jargon. And, of course, rather than tack on managerial implications at the end of a paper, AMP papers make the practical case from the start.

To sum up, AMP papers are RELEVANT, RIGOROUS, and READABLE. This means that they must do all of the following:

Inform an issue of evident importance to managerial practice and/or policy, and

Engage in rigorous and original conceptual or empirical analysis, and

Concisely and clearly convey key ideas to a non-specialized audience

For more details, please see these editorials:

(Re)building a Bridge between Scholars and Practitioners: Get AMPed!

Management Practice and Policy: A Guide to Writing for AMP

Mattering Matters: Explaining what Fits at Academy of Management Perspectives

An AMP paper must achieve all of the above criteria, but there is no single format for doing so. Below, we provide a sample format. If you have a better way, we are all ears – so long as it produces a rigorously relevant & readable paper.

Sample Format for an AMP Manuscript

Abstract and title. An AMP paper begins with an engaging but accurate title and a concise abstract of no more than 200 words. Provide potential readers with enough, but only just enough, information to quickly and accurately determine if the article is relevant to them. The abstract should state: a) the important managerial issue motivating the paper; b) how the paper analyzes this important issue; c) what the analysis finds; and d) how these findings substantively affect practice/policy.

Introduction. The content of an introduction overlaps with that of an abstract, but the introduction adds detail. Nevertheless, as with all aspects of an AMP paper, it should be concise. View it as a sort of executive summary. Open with a paragraph or two that draws the reader in, then briefly overview the paper’s structure. Limit the introduction to two double-spaced pages.

Problem statement. The key feature of an AMP paper is its focus on an important managerial issue. From the start, clearly articulate the focal issue and make a convincing case for its importance. In addition to scholarly literature, authors may refer to practitioner and government reports, as well as credible media accounts, to validate the importance of the issue. This section should fill two to four double-spaced pages.

What we know. Next, review relevant literature to accurately portray baseline knowledge about the issue. Consider literatures beyond one’s usual disciplinary base, especially if insights are limited within the focal discipline. Again, official reports and statistics from government agencies, NGOs, consulting firms, analysts, etc. may be referenced, so long as they are credible. The length of this section will vary, depending upon how established, multidisciplinary, and debated the issue, but it should not exceed four double-spaced pages. Use summary tables where needed to save space. Anything more can be placed in a supplement.

What we don’t know. What is missing? Make a strong, objective case for omissions, flaws, points of debate or other aspects of the literature that leave the focal issue inadequately explained. This section should be no longer than two double-spaced pages.

Conceptual or empirical analysis. This is the core work of the paper: scientific analysis that provides evidence to bridge the gap in understanding of this problem. The length of this section will vary with the type of conceptual or empirical analysis undertaken. Once again, though, it must be concise. Use plain language and summary charts, figures, and graphs. The usual artifacts of a robust scholarly study are required, but they are placed in a supplement.

What we have learned. This is the paper’s core contribution. Expound on how the findings advance understanding of the focal issue. Delve into implementation steps if the study provides such insights. Discuss boundary conditions, noting where the findings hold and distinguishing contexts in which they do not. Specify constraints on interpretation based upon limitations in data and analysis. Clarify aspects of the issue that remain open and require further analysis. Consider charts, figures, and other ways to visually display the results. Though focused on practical implications, the findings may also bring to light flaws and gaps in theory that warrant mention. This should be the longest section of the paper but, yes, also concise.

Conclusion. Within the space of one or two paragraphs, restate what the paper has done and remind readers why it matters. Do not simply restate the abstract. Conclude on a high note, perhaps with a call to action.

Please heed what we have written above before submitting a manuscript to AMP. Thanks!

Deadline, Submission, and Review Process

The submission deadline is 31 January 2027. Papers must be submitted on the AMP website at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/amp.

All papers will be reviewed according to the current policies of Academy of Management Perspectives. AMP papers should be grounded in evidence or robust conceptual frameworks, address relevant real-world managerial and policy issues, offer actionable insights, avoid theory fetish, and be written in a style accessible to non-specialists and practitioners.

Please feel free to contact AMP Editorial Office with any questions.

Be sure to review our Style Guide for manuscript requirements, prior to submitting.

AMD Special Research Spotlight: From Circularity to Regeneration in Management and Organizations
2026-02-01 00:00 - 2026-03-16 23:59
Submission Deadline: 16 March 2026

Submission window for Special Research Spotlight: 1 February – 16 March 2026

Guest Editors

Oana Branzei, Western University

Susan K. Cohen, University of Pittsburgh, AMD Deputy Editor

Nancy Bocken, Maastricht University

Stefano Pascucci, University of Exeter

Overview

Today’s pressing need for organizations to operate within planetary boundaries (Williams et al., 2024) dates to the 1960s, when Kenneth Boulding and Herman Daly[1] famously employed the analogy of “Spaceship Earth” to problematize the standing premise of endless growth. Building on this analogy, the concept of a circular economy promises to “decouple economic growth from resource depletion” (Kitchherr et al., 2023: 6). Concretely, a circular economy (CE) refers to an economic system based on business models that emphasize reducing, reusing, recycling and recovering materials in both production and consumption processes, with the aim of advancing environmental quality, economic prosperity and social equity, in current and future generations. The underlying assumption of a circular economy is that “materials never become waste and nature is regenerated” because closed-loop cycles optimize resource utilization, maintain financial, natural, and social capital, and minimize waste and pollution[2]. A CE thus requires evolving away from linear production systems at the micro level (products, companies, consumers), meso level (industry value chains, industrial districts, regional clusters or ecosystems) and macro level (city, region, nation, or pan-national systems).

Since the 2010s, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has advocated closed-loop economic systems to reduce waste, conserve resources and promote economic resilience. Definitions of CE have proliferated, reflecting a growing range of applications across industries and contexts. By 2017, Kirchherr, Reike and Hekkert counted 144 different definitions of circular economy. By 2023, Kirchherr and colleagues referenced 221 (see also Lacy et al., 2020; Lehtimäki et al., 2022). The European Parliament succinctly describes the circular economy as “less raw materials, less waste, fewer emissions”[3]. The World Economic Forum advocates for the circular transformation by “adopting circularity at scale.”[4] Common to these definitions is faith in free-market capitalism (neoliberal ideology) and the belief that addressing environmental challenges it poses can further fuel economic growth through ecological modernization (Dzhengiz et al., 2023: 270).

In the past two decades, circular practices like maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture, recycling, and composting have been widely adopted: organizations such as Adidas, H&M, IKEA, Patagonia, Unilever and Walmart now champion the transition from linear to circular economies as one way to mitigate problems created by over-production and over-consumption (see also Kopnina & Poldner, 2021). Many studies have documented why and how organizations embrace circularity (Bocken et al., 2023; Geissdoerfer et al., 2017; González-Sánchez et al., 2023; Kopnina & Poldner, 2021). Recent reviews (Dzhengiz et al., 2023; Hossain et al., 2021) confirm that circular systems can help firms produce less waste and convert more of the waste they do produce into something of value, a practice referred to as waste valorization (Bojovic et al., 2025). In the context of a circular economy, valorizing waste refers to the process of reusing, recycling, or converting outputs into new products or forms of energy, such as biofertilizers, bioplastics, or biofuels, instead of discarding them (Patala et al., 2022).

The conceptual landscape of circularity continues to broaden (Alexander, Pascucci, & Charnley, 2023), driven largely by practical agendas (Frishammar & Parida, 2019; Hopkinson et al., 2018; Huikkola, Kohtamäki & Rabetino, 2025; Patala, Albareda & Halme, 2022). There is evidence that micro-shifts in consumer preferences can motivate, and macro-shifts in global policies can incentivize, the transition from linear to circular economies, in sectors such as food, fashion, construction and transportation.

Nonetheless, the original premise that the circular economy can eventually replace the linear take-make-waste model as it “tackles climate change and other global challenges, like biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution,”[5] remains largely unexplored[6]. Notably, important concerns remain regarding the efficacy of CE’s unifying principles, such as efficiency (Parte & Alberca, 2024) and valorization (Bojovic et al., 2025). CE research has also recently been criticized for its assumptions of continued economic growth (Corvellec et al., 2022) and tendency to reinforce power asymmetries by marginalizing certain stakeholders, making them more vulnerable to exploitation, or rendering them invisible to decision-making processes (Lobbedez, Pascucci, & Panico, 2025).

Partly in response to these debates, some scholarly research has begun reorienting towards more radical socio-ecological principles that could reconcile the ecology with the economy of circularity (Colluci & Vecchi, 2024). By focusing on Ellen MacArthur’s third principle, “to support natural processes and leave more room for nature to thrive by moving from a take-make-waste linear economy to a circular economy”[7], regeneration foregrounds the mutuality within and among living systems. It underscores that “one form of life is inseparably connected to the healthy development of all others […] so human and nonhuman living beings coevolve in a way that nurtures diversity, creativity, complexity, and life” (Muñoz & Branzei, 2021: 510).

The World Economic Forum broadly describes regeneration as “a way to create a positive impact on the planet and society”[8] (Das & Bocken, 2024). Natural scientists view regeneration as a set of dynamic processes of renewal or re-creation of desired outcomes such as respecting planetary boundaries and protecting biodiversity. Social scientists showcase regeneration practices that actively restore, renew, or revitalize natural systems (Albareda & Branzei, 2024). A focus on regeneration reorients managers, organizations, and supply chains to protecting and restoring rather than simply limiting further harm to socio-ecological systems (Gualandris et al., 2024).

Despite growing attention to ecological regeneration[9], how it manifests as a formative and constitutive principle in business and economic systems is poorly understood and warrants empirical exploration. We particularly call for discovery-oriented research to examine the foundational premise that business and economic systems designed to be circular “can regenerate nature”. Studies that empirically explore how regenerative principles affect the design of organizational and economic systems could characterize dynamics and illuminate mechanisms that distinguish socio-ecological from socioeconomic systems, for example. We need meticulous qualitative and quantitative exploration within and across distinctive institutional, industrial, and organizational contexts to identify important antecedents and theorize mechanisms underlying the assimilation of regenerative principles and their observed consequences. To advance understanding of whether, when, and how circularity can drive regeneration, we require new insight into micro, meso, and macro level phenomena constitutive of regenerative processes. This AMD Spotlight provides a premier outlet for such research. With this initial call, and a commitment to highlight and connect research on regeneration going forward, this AMD Spotlight aims to catalyze and accumulate richly descriptive empirical accounts of and plausible theoretical explanations for regenerative processes that distinguish effective circular economic and socio-ecological systems. This knowledge is prerequisite to deductive research on circular economy and thus central to advancing robust and resilient regenerative business practices.

Circular Economy Frontiers in Management and Organizations

As the global economy continues to expand and industrialize, there is emerging consensus that closing the loop via circularity can begin to address some problems created by over-production and over-consumption (González-Sánchez et al., 2023; Webster & Pascucci, 2024). Substantial research in industrial ecology and engineering provides insight into the implementation of closed loop production systems and the validation of life cycle metrics. But the body of work on circularity has paid limited attention to managerial and organizational dilemmas regarding how to reduce, let alone reverse, ecological impacts of the linear economy (Hahn & Tampe, 2021). Research has not deeply examined or systematically mapped the diverse agencies, designs, temporalities, or interfaces between organizations and socio-ecological systems that may underpin their regenerative capacity and affect transition towards more climate just and biodiversity positive futures (Dzhengiz et al., 2023: 283).

Muñoz and Branzei (2021: 510) introduce the notion of regenerative organizing as “the process of sensing and embracing surrounding living ecosystems, aligning organizational knowledge, decision-making, and actions to these systems’ structures and dynamics and acting in conjunction, in a way that allows for ecosystems to regenerate, build resilience and sustain life. Regenerative organizations are ecologically embedded by design and designed to go beyond minimizing harm to purposefully reverse the degradation of living ecosystems. Regenerative business models (Konietzko, Das & Bocken, 2023) are premised on recognizing and respecting the paces and patterns of living interactions. Regenerative strategies help actors “enhance, and thrive through, the health of social-ecological systems in a co-evolutionary process” (Hahn & Tampe, 2021: 456).

We invite exploratory empirical research that enriches or challenges extant conceptualizations of the circular economy by advancing our understanding of how the concept of regeneration is shaping business practice and thinking. Three lenses: sufficiency, biomimicry, and rhythmicity, inform how regeneration is accomplished and foreground specific principles and dilemmas related to how regeneration might advance economic and societal well-being. Empirical exploration of how each lens transforms the design and management of businesses and economic systems, and with what impacts, are of particular interest.

1. Sufficiency

The principle of sufficiency goes beyond recycling and reuse to emphasize the need to consume less. Socio-ecological systems designed for sufficiency must be economically and ecologically regenerative. This implies designing within sufficiency constraints, like reducing demand for end products and their constitutive materials, and might include requirements for positive ecological impacts, such as promoting biodiversity or nature-positive emotions like awe or biophilia. Sufficiency thus takes issue with neoliberal ideology and ecological modernization theory underpinning much extant circularity thinking and practice. Building on Alexander’s (2012: 2) notion of the sufficiency economy, which “can be understood in direct contrast to the dominant macro-economic paradigm based on limitless growth,” Bocken and Short (2016: 41) define a sufficiency-driven business model as one that seeks “to moderate overall resource consumption by curbing demand through education and consumer engagement, making products that last longer and avoiding built-in obsolescence, focusing on satisfying ‘needs’ rather than promoting ‘wants’.” Heikkurinen and colleagues (2024) define a sufficiency ethos as “one in which limits, boundaries, optimums, enoughness, and ‘not toomuchness’ take center stage.”

Empirical exploration of sufficiency as practiced in specific contexts could help us better understand variation in how it manifests in business models and economic systems, mechanisms through which it advances regeneration, as well as the impacts of regenerative circularity when it replaces traditional linear approaches (Jungell-Michelsson & Heikkurinen, 2022; Heikkurinen et al., 2024). Discovering new contexts or modalities for organizing and measuring the efficacy of sufficiency-based business models and business ecosystems could advance the circularity frontier by illuminating how managers and other economic and political actors come to understand and define sufficiency and how this shapes their efforts to innovate and collaborate (Dzhengiz et al., 2023; Colluci & Vecchi, 2024). Exploratory research could usefully reveal how the practice of sufficiency affects power (im)balances and social equity, such as by altering opportunities to participate in the economy, particularly for actors who are closely embedded within or dependent on nature (Van Hille et al., 2021; Vlasov, 2021).

2. Biomimicry

Whereas sufficiency challenges us to rethink end goals for productive systems, biomimicry advocates learning from and replicating designs found in nature. Natural ecosystems encompass innumerable designs – in their constitutive biomaterials (e.g., proteins like collagen or materials like chitin), in the tissues and organs that biomaterials interface with, and in interdependencies among organisms comprising an ecosystem (Benyus, 1997). As solutions to challenges posed by specific environments, designs in nature offer models for creating manmade materials and technological and business systems with regenerative properties (Fisch, 2017). For instance, the unique structures and compositions of natural biomaterials have served as models for manmade materials with self-healing and self-repair properties (Raman et al., 2024). Natural ecosystems thrive on closed-loop cycles, in which waste generated by one organism becomes a valuable resource for another. In addition to being generative for manmade designs, biomimicry can sensitize human actors to vital but often invisible roles of nonhuman actors in socio-ecological systems, enroll different forms of agency, and cultivate more symbiotic relationships between human and non-human actors (Sommer et al., 2025).

While promising examples exist, there is much we do not understand about how complex ecological designs can be translated into scalable solutions for regenerative socio-ecological systems. Research has emphasized technical aspects of biomimicry, and we lack empirical evidence and deep theorization of biomimicry’s social and economic implications and potentiality. Systematic empirical work to determine when and how highly localized regenerative solutions can scale to regional or supra-regional solutions is scarce. Consensus regarding how to define, measure, and benchmark regeneration in socio-ecological systems does not exist (Barros et al., 2024). Biomimicry challenges ingrained engineering and economic mindsets rooted in extractive practices and linear models, but it is unclear where and how economic and political actors are successfully reconceptualizing fundamental concepts such as value creation and reimagining the boundaries of business and economic systems to encompass the ecologies they depend on. Given the lack of theory on these issues, empirical exploration into relationships between biomimicry and regenerative business and socio-ecological systems is needed.

3. Rhythmicity

Both natural and manmade systems embody distinctive rhythmicity: the temporal pacing of recurring cycles that are fundamental to their organization and operate at multiple time scales. In ecological systems, an example of daily rhythmicity is the circadian rhythm to which cellular activity is attuned, whereas ecosystems respond to seasonal shifts that occur with predictable regularity. Economic systems likewise exhibit rhythmicity shaped by daily patterns of consumption and production as well as macro-economic patterns that recur over longer time periods. Observed rhythmicity reflects myriad unobserved interconnections and interdependencies that orchestrate system function. Rhythmicity in nature is central to regenerative processes including resource cycling, renewal and repair. It operates at every level, from cellular to organism to ecosystem, and underlies the resilience of each. Understanding rhythmicity is crucial for designing regenerative socio-ecological systems that can self-organize and self-repair amidst recurrent ecological degradation and unpredictable disturbances.

Gualandris et al. (2024: 60) underscore the need to recognize and reconcile the multiple rhythms inherent to socio-ecological systems that can either augment or counteract one another: “the polyrhythmicity principle requires supply chain members to consider the simultaneous rhythms characterizing social–ecological systems and to make strategic, tactical, and operational decisions that align with such rhythmic patterns”. This is not so different from how entrepreneurs synchronize their ventures to multiple ecosystems (techno-economic, socio-cultural as well as ecological) except that human actors might miss the rhythmicity governing the natural systems they engage with (Muñoz and Cohen, 2017). Muñoz and Branzei (2021) suggest that organizing with and for nature can sensitize managers and organizations to a broader range of temporalities than those managers and organizations typically attend to (Bansal et al., 2022).

Despite a large body of work on temporality and temporal work within traditional organizational settings (Bansal et al., 2022), the literature on circularity has yet to fully account for temporal complexity and cyclicality involved in regenerating nature (Vlasov, 2021; Albareda & Branzei, 2024). There is little theory and limited empirical evidence to explain when and how managers can orchestrate regenerative rhythmicity in socio-ecological systems (Gualandris et al., 2024). We encourage empirical exploration of rhythmicity applied to specific roles in socio-ecological systems such as actors who intermediate between ecological and economic processes. Discovery-oriented research could reveal how polyrhythmicity is orchestrated or designed into regenerative business models, start-ups or ecosystems (Klofsten et al., 2024; Konietzko et al., 2023; Lacy, Long & Spindler, 2020; Lehtimäki et al., 2023). Further empirical exploration is needed to drive theorizing on how digital technologies, algorithms, and architectures can alleviate tensions among social and ecological rhythms; how understudied actors and intermediaries take on roles of custodians of natural, cultural, and historical heritage[10]; and to identify novel modes of organizing across distinctive ecological and socioeconomic temporalities.

Goals of the AMD Spotlight

AMD publishes research that presents “clear and compelling discoveries: empirical findings that challenge existing assumptions while opening new theoretical paths or that otherwise promote future, ‘down-the-road,’ theorizing.” (AMD website). The goals of this Spotlight are well-aligned with this mission and successful submissions will go beyond documenting circularity principles to explore dilemmas associated with organizing for sufficiency, biomimicry and rhythmicity. We encourage work that moves us beyond observing, cataloguing, and comparing actual, concrete practices and toward novel and rigorously established empirical patterns and plausible theoretical explanations of the underlying mechanisms; the latter should be informed by deep contextual understanding as well as relevant literature. Authors may wish to engage practitioners to surface generative lenses for their research (Ben-Menahem, 2024).

Sample Topics

The following is a non-exhaustive list of topics that fall within the scope of this Spotlight. We welcome diverse disciplinary lenses and methodological approaches, provided the research is relevant to management and organizational scholars and their stakeholders.

Levels. Are circularity principles best conceptualized and theorized at the level of business models and ecosystems, regional or national economies, local or global communities? What are the implications of designing for regeneration across different levels of organizing?

Ecosystems. What ecosystem actors and dynamics (e.g., intermediary organizations, inside or outside activism, incubation or acceleration) affect the diffusion and scalability of regenerative business models, and how? When, why and how do ecosystems embrace sufficiency as a goal, or turn away from overconsumption and toward enoughness?

Rights and responsibilities. How are rights to use natural resources conferred through legal, normative, or ‘in practice’ institutions? What triggers change in established norms (e.g., rooted in colonialism or neoliberalism) regarding resource utilization, in specific communities or in novel types of CEs, i.e. (bio)circular, de- or post-growth? How is the responsibility to undo ecological damage distributed among rights holders? How do new norms emerge to offer guideposts for organizing with nature?

Knowers and ways of knowing. How do particular experts and ways of knowing shape transition towards (bio)circularity and regeneration? How do logics governing socioeconomic systems evolve from efficiency and profitability (or, neoliberalism and ecological modernization) to logics that support circularity and regeneration? How do the knowers address socioeconomic and socio-ecological tensions and paradoxes central to shifting from linear to circular modes of organizing?

Attention and ways of attending: How do actors come to notice and connect with non-human actors as partners in socio-ecological systems? What roles do attention-based processes play in the transition to (bio)circularity and regeneration? What aspects of executives’ background (upbringing, training) affect their attention to downsides of traditional economies (waste, pollution, injustice)? How do new patterns of attention emerge and when and how do they encompass new kinds of connections to, or relationships with, nature? What attentional patterns and scaffolds enable the recognition of biophysical anomalies and opportunities?

Agency. What assumptions implicit in human agency, when relaxed, enable human actors to more fully connect and cooperate with non-humans in socio-ecological systems? How do nature-informed processes such as photosynthesis and chemosynthesis, metabolisms, symbiosis, or synchronicity inspire different forms and paths of agency? What paradoxes of non-human agencies (e.g., tools like AI can be used to fight climate change also exacerbate it; mycelium can replace plastic as biodegradable packaging but requires industrial processes to scale) persist when economies operate within versus beyond planetary boundaries?

Technology. What role do technologies play in accelerating the transition towards (bio)circularity and regeneration? What affordances give voice, visibility, or power to more-than-human actors? When and how does technology intermediation (including AI) enable human actors to appreciate non-human actors in new ways, to radically rethink their qualities and importance, and to reorganize interspecies relationships? How can digitization and AI inform, coordinate, and amplify the positive effects of biomaterial workers and work?

Change. How do modes of organizing change when economic actors embrace principles of sufficiency, biomimicry, and/or rhythmicity? How do theories of self and/or system change intersect when actors commit to enacting these principles? How can we track and analyze the ways organizations start to dramatically change direction, maybe even doing the opposite of what they used to do, once they realize the environment can’t support endless growth?

Ethics. What ethical guides do managers rely on when organizations transition towards regeneration? How do existing ethics evolve, or new ethics emerge, and how do they portray our responsibilities and relationships with ecologies and non-human actors?

Nature. How does the adoption of sufficiency, biomimicry, and/or rhythmicity principles affect organizational commitment to closed-loop solutions? When does reorganizing around these principles alter the balance of resource exploitation and regeneration or engagement with vulnerable human and non-human actors? When and how do sufficient, biomaterial, and/or rhythmic processes drive regenerative cycles? How do organizations effectively assess their intended and unintended impacts in socio-ecological systems?

Climate. When and how do climate disruptions affect the practice of sufficiency, biomimicry, and rhythmicity? When and why might these different perspectives accelerate or decelerate climate adaptation?

Future. What is the role of sufficiency, biomimicry, and/or rhythmicity in seeing and making alternative futures? How do actors come to understand which aspects of the future are (un)desirable? How are futures imagined and implemented, especially in settings defined by power asymmetries and colonial legacies and in a more-than-human world?

If you have a specific question about research you would like to contribute to this Spotlight, please reach out directly to one of the Guest Editors by email.

About AMD

AMD is a premier journal for the empirical exploration of data describing or investigating compelling phenomena. AMD is not a journal for deductive theorizing or hypothesis testing. Authors are encouraged to present findings without the need to “reverse engineer” any theoretical framework or hypotheses. AMD publishes discoveries resulting from both quantitative and qualitative data sources. AMD articles are phenomenon-forward rather than theory-forward. This means that AMD papers look quite different in comparison to articles sent to other empirical journals. The goal at the front end of an AMD paper should primarily be to demonstrate the novelty/interestingness of the phenomenon and why current theory fails to explain the phenomenon. It is in the discussion section of an AMD paper where a plausible theoretical explanation—the theoretical contribution—is provided. The goal for every AMD paper is for discoveries derived from empirical exploration to open new lines of research inquiry. For further information about the goals of AMD, we encourage potential submitters to review recent “From-the-Editors” essays (Miller, 2024; Rockmann, 2023) and to visit the AMD website.

Submission Guidelines

Standard AMD paper guidelines apply to papers submitted for this Spotlight. Manuscripts may be submitted as traditional papers or as Discoveries-through-Prose. Discoveries-through-Prose are crafted in more creative and engaging ways than traditional papers. When composing such manuscripts, we encourage authors to relax their use of traditional headings and traditional “academic writing” to create a compelling narrative from start to finish. More information about Discoveries-through-Prose can be found on the AMD website.

References

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Alexander, A., Pascucci, S., & Charnley, F. (2023). Handbook of the circular economy: Transitions and transformation. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.

Alexander, S. (2012). The sufficiency economy. http://simplicityinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/TheSufficiencyEconomy3.pdf (accessed February 1, 2025).

Bansal, P., Reinecke, J., Suddaby, R., & Langley, A. (2022). Temporal work: The strategic organization of time. Strategic Organization, 20(1), 6-19.

Barros, M. V., Salvador, R., Pieroni, M., & Piekarski, C. M. (2024). How to measure circularity? State-of-the-art and insights on positive impacts on businesses. Environmental Development, 50, 100989.

Ben-Menahem, S. M. (2024). Engaging practitioners in empirical exploration. Academy of Management Discoveries, 10(2), 155-162.

Benyus, J. M. (1997). Biomimicry: Innovation inspired by nature. New York: Morrow.

Bocken, N., Pinkse, J., Darnall, N., & Ritala, P. (2023). Between circular paralysis and utopia: organizational transformations towards the circular economy. Organization & Environment, 36(2), 378-382.

Bocken, N.M.P., & Short, S.W. (2016). Towards a sufficiency-driven business model: Experiences and opportunities. Environmental Innovation and Social Transitions, 18, 41–61.

Corvellec, H., Stowell, A.F., & Johansson, N. (2022). Critiques of the circular economy. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 26, 421–432.

Das, A. & Bocken, N. (2024). Regenerative business strategies: A database and typology to inspire business experimentation towards sustainability. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 49, 529-544.

Dzhengiz, T., Miller, E. M., Ovaska, J.-P., & Patala, S. (2023). Unpacking the circular economy: A problematizing review. International Journal of Management Reviews. doi/pdf/10.1111/ijmr.12329

Fisch, M. (2017). The nature of biomimicry: Toward a novel technological culture. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 42(5), 795-821.

Fischer, J., Farny, S., Abson, D.J. et al. (2024). Mainstreaming regenerative dynamics for sustainability. Nature Sustainability, 7, 964–972.

González-Sánchez, R., Alonso-Muñoz, S., & Medina-Salgado, M. S. (2023). Circularity in waste management: A research proposal to achieve the 2030 Agenda. Operations Management Research, 16(3), 1520-1540.

Gualandris, J., Branzei, O., Wilhelm, M., Lazzarini, S., Linnenluecke, M., Hamann R., Dooley, K. J., Michael L. Barnett, M. L., & Chien-Ming Chen, C.-M. (2025). Unchaining supply chains: Transformative leaps toward regenerating social–ecological systems. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 60(1), 53-67.

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[1] https://esgri.com/circular_economy/

[2] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-circularity

[3] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20151201STO05603/circular-economy-definition-importance-and-benefits#:~:text=What%20is%20the%20circular%20economy,cycle%20of%20products%20is%20extended.

[4] https://initiatives.weforum.org/the-circular-transformation-of-industries/home

[5] https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/topics/circular-economy-introduction/overview

[6] https://circulareconomy.europa.eu/platform/sites/default/files/emf_completing_the_picture.pdf; https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/capturing-the-climate-change-mitigation#:~:text=Circular%20economy’s%20potential%20key%20role,50%25%20of%20global%20GHG%20emissions.

[7] https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/regenerate-nature

[8] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/01/business-resilience-regeneration/

[9] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/01/business-resilience-regeneration/

[10] https://www.undp.org/blog/truly-circular-economy-we-need-listen-indigenous-voices; https://regenexpo.com.au/session/indigenous-knowledge-the-basis-of-circularity/
