The role of management science in forming next era semantics

The paper outlines in a social system theoretical perspective a position for engaged scholarship in bridging the gulf between theorizing and practice. Partaking as “mid-wifes” for shared semantics in a polycentric network may be one role for engaged scholars to assist. However, for a shared semantic reservoir for “next era” leadership and management to form, one more layer of re�ection is needed: how to manage “backwards” from the future. The paper addresses geographic inclusion/exclusion, which seems to be reinforced as digitalization and abstract knowledge are gaining ground, even though bits and abstract knowledge should easily be detached from spatial limitations. Research programs targeting “grand challenges” and “grand solutions” is de�ned by mega-projects de�ned and �nanced by large foundations or other large-scale actors, and well-connected international research centers and research networks are needed to in�uence this agenda-setting. The paper argues that forming regional polycentric networks (including scienti�c research scholars) may to a greater extend bridge the global agendas with local and regional issues to not be excluded in a transition process.


Introduction
Leadership and management are being challenged and transformed due to an accelerated growth of inward-looking social systems driving an increased complexity and an unsustainable web of risks due to multiple blind spots.This actualizes Luhmann's (Luhann, 2013, Chap.4) considerations about the major historical societal shifts, all being characterized by a new societal structure capable of handling increasing complexity.Development of communication technologies, such as from oral to written and further to printed and mass media have shown to be crucial in enabling such transitions.Now, it once again seems, that both the technology and societal structures are changing.The internet, powerful computers, big data, and arti cial intelligence are manifest as new communication technologies, and businesses and organizations are linking up in value added polycentric networks.These ways of organizing are highly exible and capable of handling complexity.In combination with the new technology, these new ways of organizing seem to potentially become a new societal networked structure.Yet, major societal shifts also need new shared semantics, which is condensed meaning, that can be drawn upon by many events of communication.This has still not emerged.This paper concerns the role of management science in forming a semantics for "next era" leadership and management.The paper outlines in a social system perspective a position for engaged scholarship in bridging the gulf between theorizing and practice when assisting the emergence of a shared semantic reservoir.Thus, the discussion of the rigor-relevance gap is revisited.
Partaking as "mid-wifes" for shared semantics in a polycentric network may be one role for engaged scholars to assist.However, for a shared semantic reservoir for "next era" leadership and management to form, it is to be discussed if one more layer of re ection is needed: how to manage "backwards" from the future?Mostly, research programs targeting "grand challenges" and "grand solutions" is de ned by megaprojects de ned and nanced by large foundations or other large-scale actors.Well-connected international research centers and research networks are needed to in uence this agenda-setting.
Peripheral regions are in risk to be left out (excluded) in this process.This paper argues that forming regional polycentric networks (including scienti c research scholars) may to a greater extend bridge the global agendas with local and regional issues to not be excluded in a transition process.
The paper applies a social systems theory approach, while discussing the role of polycentric networks and double attribution to bridge the perspectives of different function systems.The paper also addresses geographic inclusion/exclusion, which seems to be reinforced as digitalization and abstract knowledge are gaining ground, even though bits and abstract knowledge should easily be detached from spatial limitations.

Subsections of the paper are:
• Revisiting the gulf between theory and practice -and the rigor-relevance gap.
• Understanding of polycentric networks of organizations and the role of a shared semantic reservoir • The role of engaged scholarship -as a midwife for shared semantics, while also honoring the rigor of science.Can engaged scholars facilitate leading backwards" from the future?The challenges addressing grand challenges and solutions • The ex-/inclusion of peripheral regions, and "others".
The paper concludes on possible roles for management and leadership scholars to engages in the formation of semantics for "next era" leadership and management 2. Revisiting The Gulf Between Theory And Practice -And The Rigorrelevance Gap.
The understanding of "the gulf" between theory and practice takes its starting point in Luhmann's distinction between theory and practice (Luhmann, 2018(Luhmann, [2000]]), leading to what in social system theoretical discussions have been termed: the rigor-relevance gap (Kieser and Leiner, 2009).This gap and engaged scholarship as a way not to bridge, but to narrow this gulf, has been analyzed and discussed in Neisig (2021).Kieser and Leiner argue that it is impossible to assess the relevance of research within the function system of science, and therefore, the rigor-relevance gap is unbridgeable.Neisig (2021) is challenging this position arguing for a "dual" constitution of engaged scholarship in polycentric networks, and although it is not possible to overcome the differentiation of function systems and therefore also not the rigor-relevance gap, it is possible to bridge (or narrow) this gap through the dual constituency in polycentric networks theorized by Teubner (1993).Thus, engaged scholarship is multifunctional.
According to Luhmann (2018Luhmann ( [2000]]):394) "we have to be satis ed with the "loose coupling of cognition and action"."The reason is that "a theory contains its own amelioration program".By this statement, Luhmann makes clear, the distinction between science and non-science.Science and practice operate by different codes.In other words, an engaged scholar may need to observe different codes while partaking in a network of organizations but needs to operate by the scienti c code when producing science.By this, we agree with Luhmann.Luhmann argues further, that if theory asks what effects it has on practice, the distinction, theory practice reenters itself.
With such a reentry, the calculus goes beyond the scope of application of the classical modus operandi for cognition and, one could say, becomes non-computable.The question is then how continuing the operation can still be steered with regard to objectivity or intersubjective congruence.… no path to meaningful critique will be opened by the initial question about the practical use of theory.Whoever poses this question, therefore, espouses the interests of practice.They are free to do so.But it is not clear what this could contribute to improving what theory can be expected to provide (Luhmann, 2018(Luhmann, [2000]]:394).
As also described in Neisig (2021), Kieser and Leiner (2009) discuss the rigour-relevance gap in management research and the proposal to overcome it, seen from a system theory perspective.They underline, that science, cannot be authentically integrated into a communication of other systems, such as the system of a business organization.Their paper underlines that social systems can only irritateprovoke or disturb -each other, i.e. alter conditions in such a way that other systems are forced to respond.They highlight, that it is impossible to assess the relevance of research output within the system of science.This we will not dispute.
Their position also is, that neither action research nor Mode 2 research (i.e.knowledge generated in a context of application) nor recent approaches to collaborative research can succeed in producing research that is rigorous as well as relevant.This, however, is disputed in Neisig (2021), a position which is elaborated in this paper to carve out a possible role for management and leadership scholars to engages in the formation of semantics for "next era" leadership and management -while producing management science.
Seen from Kieser and Leiner's (2009) position, science and practice are philosophically 'unbridgeable'.Researchers and practitioners cannot collaboratively produce research, they can only irritate or disturb each other in such a way, that each is altering its way of acting.However, as they argue, sometimes irritations or provocations turn out inspiring.Neisig (2021) argues, that both researchers and practitioners may possess dual positions in polycentric networks paying attention to several codes while producing knowledge but need to communicate in clear codes for different function systems.
The position of Kieser and Leiner (2009) is also criticized in a reply from Hodgkinson and Rousseau (2009) showing the inconsistency with the available evidence.Drawing on a diversity of management research domains, Hodgkinson and Rousseau provide counter-illustrations of work where researchers, in a number of cases in collaboration with practitioners, have generated knowledge that is both socially useful and academically rigorous assessed by each system.Neisig (2021) argues that the function of sociology to provide a self-description of society must allow communication with the communication from systems other than science -not only with communication from scholars addressing the theory from within.Otherwise, the role of social science as being a recursive self-description of society is not ful lled because not even a loose coupling with other social systems takes place.The self-description needs to irritate (disturb) other social systems for science to ful ll its role as the producer of a self-description of society -and it also needs to get disturbed by the society.However, Luhmann also has elaborated on his standpoints concerning sociology's general issue with autological reference (Luhmann, 1997): The question is…whether or not a sociological theory is capable of satisfying all technical requirements of the subsystem science and at the same time, and with the same set of texts, can contribute to the selfdescription of the society.Can sociology, in other words, operate as science and simultaneously observe the society in which it operates as observer?Can it observe itself as the observer?
We cannot give an "object" and de nite answer to this question.For the question itself implies a re-entry of the observer/observed distinction into itself.And this means that we shall have to face unresolvable indeterminancies, temporalization, oscillation, memory function and above all that must replace the computation of all possible statements by a feedback reference to the historical situation from which we have to start.This will also count for research performed as engaged scholarship, that will need to include this feedback reference.According to the social system theory, the society and the description of it cannot consist of anything other than the society.It means that the sociologist cannot stand on the outside of society and produce a critical conviction of its subject eld (i.e. the society).Instead, social sciences produce a self-description of society in society (Luhmann and Fuchs, 1994).This also counts for the engaged scholar's interaction with practitioners.One becomes part of e.g. a polycentric network of organizations, but still also are persons related to scienti c function system.

Understanding Of Polycentric Networks Of Organizations And The Role Of A Shared Semantic Reservoir
Teubner has theorized polycentric networks in a classic article (Teubner, 1993), de ning them as: .. .a"dual" constitution of contract and organization in one institutional arrangement.. .Network operations are.. .emergentphenomena.. .If the dual attribution of action enters into the self-description of the social arrangement and is also used operationally there, then the network has constituted itself as an autonomous system of action via the constitution of new elementary acts.. ..networks are higher-order autopoietic systems, to the extent that they set up emergent elementary acts ("network operations") through dual attribution, and link these up in circular fashion into an operational system (Teubner, 1993, p. 49).
It is the dual pursuit of the individual (organizational -which for scholars are to contribute to scienti c research) and collective (network) goals that Teubner portrays as a polycentric or multi-polarity characteristic of the uni ed network (Teubner, 1993, p. 51).According to Teubner (1993, p. 51), such networks have an advantage in exibility and adaptation to disturbances as the hybridity of this dual constituency may vary over time, and the network can react as a whole, or the nodes can react autonomously.
Engaged scholarship can be part of such a polycentric network, and thereby have a dual constituency, too.As an engaged scholar, the scientist is both a person related to the research organization oriented towards the scienti c function system, and part of the networked higher-order system.However, polycentric networks are forced to pay attention to multiple codes and/or programs -and so are engaged scholars partaking in such networks.
An argument that scienti c research then loses objectivity is invalid as social science always is part of society and producing a self-description of society.
Knowledge production may end up being framed (or coded) by different systems in the process of communication.This also counts for engaged management scholars, partaking in a search for solutions to practical problems, e.g.engaging in the formation of semantics for "next era" leadership and management -while simultaneously communicating in scienti c codes for the scienti c system producing management science.This double constituency is congruent with Teubner's de nition of partaking in polycentric networks and is further elaborated in Neisig (2021).Rasche and Behnam (2009) argue that practice has to make scienti c knowledge relevant by incorporating it into the speci c logic of its system.They argue that such an integration of knowledge is only possible by rst acting as if the offered knowledge were relevant and to then modify and extend it according to the idiosyncrasies of the system.They characterize these as-if assumptions as ction and show their signi cance for rethinking the concept of relevance.Neisig (2021) shows, how this ts well with Design Thinking as an approach.This we will not repeat in this paper.
When engaging with practitioners as a scholar in the search for "next era" management semantics, the semantics must be found relevant by all systems to select the meaning in their own operative contribution to the network and to build trust in the social arrangement.In Luhmannian terms, this is to increase the sensitivity and openness for structural coupling by which systems shape each other's environment (Luhmann 1995).This is said, knowing that in polycentric networks participating organizations have different idiosyncrasies and preferences for different function system's codes, and knowing that an engaged scholarship cannot in a rational way predetermine a semantic, or operationalize a shared semantic reservoir on behalf of the network.The emergence of a shared semantic reservoir will be shaped and reshaped in a never-ending process.The codes from the scienti c system: true untrue (Roth and Schütz, 2015) do not apply directly for a shared semantic reservoir, whether it is a model, or other shared tools, concepts or words; but in accordance with Teubner's understanding of polycentric networks, the selection of meaning has a dual constituency belonging to both individual members (organizations, which are multifunctional and programmable decision machines by nature (Roth, 2014, Will et al, 2018, Roth et al, 2020)) and the network, -a higher-order autopoietic system.In this dual constitution scholars also need to ask scienti c questions and communicate in scienti c codes with the scienti c system -the engaged scholar thus also pays attention to multiple codes (while communicates in clear codes for different function systems).

The Role Of Engaged Scholarship -As A Midwife For Shared
Semantics, While Also Honoring The Rigor Of Science.Can Engaged Scholars Facilitate Leading Backwards" From The Future?The Challenges Of Addressing Grand Challenges Solutions As a sematic reservoir is not something, that can be rationally constructed nor steered, and as it is formed and reformed in an ongoing process, it is an open question, which role engaged scholarship may play in this ongoing process of shared semantics to emerge.The suggestion (Rasche and Behnam, 2009) is, that practice has to make scienti c knowledge relevant by incorporating it into the speci c logic of its system, by rst acting "as if" the offered knowledge was relevant and to then modify and extend it according to the idiosyncrasies of the system.The role of engaged scholarship, thus, adapts along with the process of emergence of a shared semantic reservoir while the boundaries of different systems need to be respected.
The dual role of engaged scholarship implies not only to assist the collective goal of the network but also to produce scienti c knowledge.The dual position of the scholars demands that they also ask what interesting research questions would motivate engaging in such a process (i.e.what do we hope to learn and discover?)-for instance, research question concerning scenarios of how "next era" management semantics come about and how they may ameliorate society's capacity for observing itself in a process of changing structures and semantics.
Working as engaged management scholars as a mid-wife to attempt supporting a kick-start of shared semantics to emerge is a bottom-up process.However, would shared semantics for "next era" leadership and management need one more layer of re ection: how to manage "backwards" from the future?This is a strategic management approach, that opposite to strategic planning, takes the point of departure in a future ideal, and then re ect on how to bridge the gap between today's current state of operation and the vision.It is about a strategic mind-set creating meaning instead of plans that falls by the wayside (Haines, 2000 p.29).It may be an organizational way of re ecting on the fast-paced change processes in the 21st century, including how to deal with polycentric networks, digitalization, and skills.
However, if such meta-re ective approaches should lead to change processes at a societal level, shared ideas, visions, heuristics, models etc. about the future are required; that is a shared semantic reservoir is needed, which we still argue, that engaged management scholars may support to bring about.
Czakon, ( 2019) is claiming, that: "Grand challenges offer a unique opportunity to take management scholarship to the next level of social legitimacy re ected in meaningfulness, predictability, and trustworthiness (Suchman, 1995).By addressing socially relevant issues that are possibly solvable through coordinated action of various stakeholders, by improving research methods in view of more interactive and current methods, and by recognizing the unique advantage organizations and interorganizational settings have for eradicating the root causes of grand challenges -management can again become one of the most important human inventions (Hamel, 2008)".(Czakon, 2019, p.21)However, research programs targeting "grand challenges" and "grand solutions" mostly is de ned by mega-projects nanced by large foundations or other large-scale actors.Well-connected international research centers and research networks are needed to in uence this agenda-setting.Peripheral regions are in risk to be left out (excluded) in this process.

Ex-/inclusion Of Peripheral Regions
One year before he passed away, Luhmann (1997) re ected on globalization versus the world society, in which he argues, that the world is not to be conceived of as regional societies but as a single world society.

Luhmann (1997) states, that:
… the worst imaginable scenario might be that the society of the next century will have to accept the metacode of inclusion/exclusion.And this would mean that some human beings will be persons and others only individuals, that some are included into functions systems for successful or unsuccessful careers and others are excluded from the careers and others are excluded from the systems remaining bodies that try to survive the next day; that some are emancipated as persons and others are emancipated as bodies; that concern and neglect become differentiated along this boundary; that tight coupling of exclusions and loose couplings of inclusion differentiate fate and fortunes and that two forms of integration will compete: the negative integration of exclusion and the positive integration of inclusions.
Luhmann states already in 1997, that he can see signs of this development e.g. in migration and ghettos, and he states this not as a regional problem, but as a problem in the relation between the social systems, the world society and its human environment.Jönhill (2012), also argues for the use of inclusion and exclusion as a guiding distinction of the analysis of issues of ethnic and national background e.g.related to migration.This perspective, he argues, allows to deal with a multitude of matters and social issues, all demanding differentiated answers and 'solutions'.
The signs of this worst-case scenario, outlined by Luhmann in 1997, may since then have gained ground, and can now be observed and described by the extreme inequality in wealth distribution described by Piketty (2014), or as the rise of the precariat (Standing, 2011), feeding into the populist political movements.It also may feed into the scenarios build by Roth (2021), in which he envisions future possibilities of a restrati cation of the world society based on either a "capitalism scientocracy" scenario, or a scenario called "ristorism", which is an autocratic, digitalized society were health (for people, planet and livelihoods) is prioritized above all, but on the expense of privacy and liberal democracies.However, Luhmann (1997) states, that: "We have to come to terms, once and for all, with a society without human happiness…, without taste, without solidarity, without similarity of living conditions.It makes no sense to insist on these aspirations, to revitalize or to supplement the list by renewing old names such as civil society or community.This can only mean dreaming up new utopias and generating new disappointments in a narrow span of political possibilities.These desirabilities serve as a central phantom that seems to guarantee the unity of the system.But one cannot introduce the unity of the system into the system.We may well recognize the hardships and the injustice of strati cation, but this is no longer the main problem of society… Thus, Luhmann disputes the notion of geographical strati cation (or hierarchical) differentiation, as he claims that it has become more and more doubtful, that we can change the structure of society by appealing to reason, by critique, by reforming institutions, or by revolution.He states, that neither "exploitation" nor "suppression", which is terms that refer to strati cation, are adequate descriptions.He argues that these terms are outdated mythologies, negative utopias suggesting an easy way out of this situation.Luhmann's alternative way of addressing the problem is, through the notion of inclusion and exclusion; terms that relate to functional differentiation and not to strati cation.He also recognizes that function systems presuppose inclusion of every human being, but in fact exclude persons that do not meet their requirements, such as individuals without birth certi cates or identity cards, or the capacity to call the police -and that one exclusion and explain the other.Luhmann also asks: "What can we expect when the very success of the function systems depends on neglect?"Instead of searching for a better society, he advices to search for "what is the problem?".He concludes that the problem is not suppression, but neglect.
By researching and illustrating semantics that ameliorate social systems ability to observe themselves "as from outside", and to observe the way in which other systems (including non-social) observe, engaged management scholars working from a social systems approach, may engage with organizations and polycentric networks to uncover this neglect to set-up strategies for a multifunctional inclusion -also of non-social systems.Further, this involved working with observations supporting re ection on how to constrain the social systems own autopoiesis in such a way, that previously externalities are re exively included.
Luhmann (1997) also recognizes, that "functional differentiation is a speci c historical arrangement that has developed since the late Middle Ages and was disruptive only in the second half of the 18th century".Recognizing this, Luhmann asks, how it is possible that a system [the world society] can change its dominant form of internal differentiation?Luhmann answers, that the operational closed systems produce, both more indepencies and more dependencies at the same time.The latter, because: "the world society has reached a higher level of complexity with higher structural contingencies, more unexpected and unpredictable changes … and above all, more interlinked dependencies and inter dependencies.This means that causal construction, (calculations, plannings) are no longer possible from a central and therefore "objective" point of view.…We have to live with a polycentric, polycontextual society".Thus, how to perceive polycentricity and polycentextuality in the speci c context is an important step to reach a re ective state.Luhman also states (Luhmann, 1997): Looking ahead to our future, we cannot see any other form of differentiation.Regression to earlier forms, say strati cation or segmentary (tribal) differentiation, may be possible, but is probable only after some large-scale catastrophe.We cannot close the list of possible types of differentiation on ontological or logical grounds, but we cannot conceive of another type either (Likewise the strati ed societies of the past could think of functional differentiation only at the role level… We suggest, that exactly a polycentric, polycontextual society, may produce polycentric networks interlinked by digitalization as a way to "compensate" for the "neglect" produced by the functional differentiation of the modernity. Forming regional polycentric networks (including scienti c research scholars) may also to a greater extend bridge the global agendas with local and regional issues to not be excluded in a transition process, addressing geographic (regional) exclusion, which seems to be reinforced as digitalization and abstract knowledge are gaining ground, even though bits and abstract knowledge should easily be detached from spacial limitations.
In how to a greater extend to bridge local and regional issues towards the strong forces in a transition process, teaming up in regional collaborations may be "the missing link" to help peripheral regions not to be left out in the transition process.
The challenge in focusing at "grand challenges" however is: who may de ne and legitimize challenges as "grand challenges", and who has a legit position to choose the perspective in which to study "grand challenges"?A multifunctional perspectivation and engaged scholarship in grand challenges is useful for such a broad scope.

Conclusion
The paper discusses potential roles for management and leadership scholars in shaping the semantics for "next era" leadership and management.It addresses the concept of the rigor-relevance gap, which refers to the disconnect between scienti c research and practical application.Some argue that this gap is unbridgeable (Kieser and Leiner, 2009), while others (Neisig, 2021) argue that engaged scholarship in polycentric networks can bridge the gap by allowing both researchers and practitioners to communicate and produce knowledge in different codes, while establishing a polycentric network.Teubner (1993) has theorized polycentric networks as higher-order autopoietic systems with a dual constituency that may vary over time, as the network can react either as a whole, or the nodes can react autonomously allowing them a high capacity to handle complexity.
The paper suggests that scholars may play a role in facilitating shared semantics in polycentric networks by acting as "mid-wifes" for shared semantics in a polycentric network may be one role for engaged scholars to engage, with a dual role to as part of the network, and as persons paying attention to the scienti c system.
Luhmann pointed out in 1997 that function systems may neglect certain individuals, peripheral regions, or the ecological environment.Instead of trying to create a better society, Luhmann advises to focus on identifying the problem.This paper suggests that management scholars who adopt a social systems approach may work with organizations and polycentric networks to uncover this neglect and develop strategies for multifunctional inclusion, as well as inclusion of non-social systems.This could be done by researching and illustrating semantics that improve social systems' ability to understand themselves and other systems as from an outside perspective.Additionally, the paper suggests that this approach would involve types of observations supporting re ection on how to constrain social systems' own autopoiesis in order to include previously external factors.This type of semantics is seen as necessary for reorganizing structural couplings for a "next era." The paper suggests that for scholars to participate in a polycentric network in order to establish shared semantics, they must approach the process in a bottom-up manner.However, an additional layer of re ection may be needed -a re ection on how to manage "backwards" from the future.This means targeting "grand challenges" and "grand solutions" with a strategic mindset creating meaning, rather than creating plans that ultimately fail.However, the paper raises the question of who is being included or excluded in setting the agendas of "grand challenges" and "grand solutions", as well as forming large research programs and selecting projects targeting these.