Another organization is possible: New directions in research on alternative enterprise

Interest in alternative enterprises is again high, yielding a wave of popular experimentation with alternative organizational models, and new scholarship. From an organizational studies perspective, what have we learned about alternative enterprises since the last prior round of such experimentation in the 1970s, and what questions remain unanswered? Reflecting historical research legacies, scholarship often remains focused on micro-aspects of internal organizational dynamics, but recent research at the meso scale has advanced our understanding of alternatives' field-level construction, and their relationship to external forces and other organizational forms. Less is known, however, at the macro scale about how or why these enterprises develop and are sustained in certain contexts, although work on this front is emerging. Meanwhile, many new alternative organizational forms/practices have not been well-studied. Future research can remedy this oversight, while also seeking to improve our understanding of the effect of external, macro and meso-scaled dynamics of alternative enterprises. It can also seek to better explain variations in alternatives' institutional development and effectiveness in different sectoral contexts and domains, most notably across today's crisis-related fronts of climate change, housing precarity, and technological change. In so doing, it could more directly speak to a rising generation's concerns, and better enable their effective deployment of alternatives in practice.