Thematic Issue in the making (2027): The Management Bias: from Science to Innovation

Timeline: Abstract proposals are due by 2 April 2026, full papers by 1 July 2026, revised versions by 1 November 2026, with publication scheduled for March 2027.

Proposal submissions should be sent by e-mail to: novation@ufpr.br

Download CfP HERE

Presentation

In recent decades, the fields of science policy, innovation studies and organisational theory have seen an increasing influence of management discourse —a trend we propose to call the management bias. While initially grounded in efforts to improve organizational coordination and strategic effectiveness, the managerial mindset has gradually evolved into a prescriptive, self-reinforcing ideology that shapes not only how organisations operate but also how knowledge, creativity, and responsibility are framed. This thematic issue seeks to examine the epistemic, normative, and institutional consequences of the expansion of managerial logic from its corporate origins to the broader domains of science and innovation.

Building on critical traditions such as those developed by Abrahamson (1991; 1996), we understand management not simply as a neutral toolkit of rational procedures, but as a fashion-driven and legitimacy-seeking system, in which concepts rise and fall according to symbolic value rather than proven efficacy. Heusinkveld (2013) adds to this diagnosis by showing how consulting firms, media, and business schools function as management idea factories, engineering and marketing innovation as commodity —often under pressure to deliver novelty over substance. Vinsel and Russell (2020) coined this to be the «innovation-speak» of our era. From a more philosophical angle, Blok (2019; 2020; 2022) problematizes the reduction of management to control, proposing instead a model rooted in responsiveness, ethics, and meaning-making. He urges us to reimagine management beyond technocratic metrics, through an ethos of care, vulnerability, and critical action.

Historically, Chandler (1977) revealed how the “visible hand” of managerial coordination displaced market mechanisms in shaping modern capitalism. Yet what was once a structural solution to industrial complexity has, over time, become an expansive framework for governing research, innovation, and even ethics —often flattening plurality, reflexivity, and contextual nuance. As Micklethwait and Wooldridge (1996; 2011) have observed, the proliferation of management gurus and bestsellers has produced a landscape where contradictions abound and where the management discourse often substitutes spectacle for insight.

It is crucial then to recognise how mainstream frameworks and policies in the field of innovation have been predominantly shaped by a persistent management bias. This bias is evident in the widespread adoption of firm-centric, market-oriented rationales that frame innovation primarily as a tool for value capture, competitiveness, and entrepreneurial performance. Even language such as “value creation,” “shared value,” and “participation” is often used in a symbolic or instrumental ways, serving to legitimise managerial agendas while sidelining critical concerns related to inequality, ecological sustainability, and democratic governance. Such framings persist not only because they are institutionally reinforced, but also because they exploit the cognitive tendency towards overconfidence and the illusion of explanatory depth —biases that, as Kahneman (2011) notes, lead actors to overestimate their understanding of complex systems and to overlook unintended consequences. They also endure because management discourse thrives on the production and circulation of fashionable ideas, where rhetorical novelty substitutes for empirical efficacy (Heusinkveld, 2013). Rather than fostering pluralistic or socially grounded approaches, mainstream innovation discourses tend to naturalise technocratic optimisation, flexible labour regimes, and public-private arrangements aligned with corporate priorities. This discursive convergence has contributed to a narrowing of innovation discourses and imaginaries, privileging strategic and performance-based logics while marginalising alternative, collective, or care-centred perspectives —thus reaffirming the normative and performative authority of managerial thought across the innovation landscape (Brandão, 2021; Brandão, forthcoming).

Critically engaging with the management bias provides a fertile lens through which to reconsider the dominant imaginaries of innovation (Godin, 2015; Pfotenhauer & Jasanoff, 2017). Mainstream views often depict portray innovation as a neutral, value-free process driven by competition, entrepreneurship, and technological novelty —a narrative that aligns seamlessly with managerial tropes of performance, optimisation, and strategic control (Heusinkveld, 2013). Yet, as this thematic issue contends, such conceptions are themselves shaped by historically situated management ideologies that prioritise measurable outputs, hierarchical coordination, and market alignment. These conceptions persist, in part, because of cognitive simplifications that favour coherence and causality —characteristics of what Kahneman (2011) terms System 1 thinking: fast, intuitive, and prone to bias. The repeated success of managerial discourse in framing innovation outcomes can be traced to its compatibility with institutional environments that favour confident, linear, and seemingly rational narratives, even when the underlying systems are complex and uncertain. Moreover, as Heusinkveld (2013) demonstrates, the innovation discourse itself is often highly contested and performative, with consulting firms acting as “idea factories” that generate a rhetoric of novelty while frequently repackaging older concepts under new labels (e.g., Trott & Hartmann, 2009). By foregrounding the social, ethical, and epistemological underpinnings of innovation, we encourage contributors to consider how managerialism not only narrows the scope of what is deemed “innovative,” but also obscures alternative paths grounded in solidarity, care, experimentation, and dissent (Blok, 2022). In this way, problematising the management bias becomes an invitation to expand our collective capacity to imagine and enact other futures for innovation —ones that are more reflexive, inclusive, and socially attuned.

In summary, this thematic issue invites contributions that explore how management has become not only a mode of organising, but a mode of knowing and intervening —a dominant framework that reshapes science and innovation from within. Among other possible contributions not listed, we are interested in submissions that:

Examine how management discourse is performed and institutionalised in scientific organisations:

Studies that analyse how strategic planning, evaluation frameworks (e.g., KPIs, impact metrics), performance audits, and managerial jargon have been embedded in the day-to-day practices of universities, research institutes, and funding bodies, thereby transforming academic labour, knowledge production, and institutional autonomy.

Analyse the commodification of innovation practices and the circulation of management tools and metrics:

Contributions that investigate how innovation is increasingly framed through business-oriented logics of value creation, scalability, and competitiveness —often through the dissemination of standardised tools (e.g., business models, roadmaps, scorecards) by consultants, think tanks, or international agencies.

Reflect on alternatives to the managerial imaginary in organizing knowledge, care, responsibility, or transformation:

Papers that explore counter-hegemonic or subaltern approaches to innovation and organisation —including feminist, decolonial, convivial, or solidarity-based practices—that resist efficiency-driven logics and instead foreground relationality, reciprocity, and care.

Offer genealogical or philosophical accounts of how “management” has extended into domains once governed by collegiality, autonomy, or public mission:

Contributions that trace the historical evolution and epistemological underpinnings of managerial thinking, documenting how it has infiltrated fields such as education, health, research, or public policy —reframing them through the lenses of accountability, productivity, and optimization.

Interrogate the role of consultancy and management expertise in shaping global innovation agendas:

Analyses of how management consultancies, international organisations, and expert networks act as carriers of managerial logic, producing and legitimising global innovation scripts that are diffused across diverse contexts with limited local adaptation or critique.

Explore the affective and symbolic dimensions of managerialism in innovation ecosystems:

Contributions that engage with how feelings of control, trust, urgency, or risk are mobilised through managerial language and rituals —shaping how actors experience and relate to innovation processes within universities, firms, NGOs, or public institutions.

Study the intersection of management ideology with funding and evaluation regimes:

Empirical or theoretical accounts of how ‘projectification’, deliverable-based accountability, and competition for funding reflect and reproduce a management-centred vision of research and innovation —often at odds with long-term, collaborative, or exploratory work.

Critique the deployment of managerial models under the guise of openness, participation, and co-creation:

Submissions that problematise how terms such as “ecosystem,” “platform,” “shared-value,” or “co-creation” are used to signal inclusiveness, while masking enduring asymmetries in power, voice, and epistemic authority.

Engage with the cognitive and behavioural underpinnings of managerial dominance in decision-making:

Draw on behavioural science or cognitive theory to explore how management ideas become intuitive defaults in complex environments, thereby reinforcing overconfidence, simplification, and symbolic control in situations of uncertainty.

Document institutional experiments that resist or subvert the managerial bias in science and innovation:

Case studies of initiatives —be they grassroots, institutional, or policy-level— that challenge the managerial orthodoxy through alternative models of governance, evaluation, or knowledge mobilisation.

 

Our goal is to foster a critical and interdisciplinary dialogue on how the management bias operates —and how it might be confronted, resisted, or transcended. This requires us to move beyond surface-level critiques or denunciations of managerialism and engage more profoundly with its institutional, epistemic, affective, and cognitive foundations. We aim to create a space for analyses that not only deconstruct the managerial logics shaping contemporary science, technology, and innovation policy, but also illuminate practices of resistance, reinvention, and care. We welcome contributions that explore how new imaginaries and coalitions —whether rooted in feminist theory, decolonial critique, political ecology, or alternative policy frameworks— can reclaim innovation as a terrain of collective deliberation, public purpose, and plural knowledge systems. By doing so, this thematic issue seeks to contribute to the construction of a more reflexive, inclusive, and socially embedded vision of innovation governance that is attentive to power, history, and the possibility of other futures.