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Gender, Work & Organization
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EDITORIAL
Transcending Boundaries: Reimagining the Possibilities of
Scholarship
Ajnesh Prasad
EGADE Business School, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico City, CDMX, Mexico
Correspondence: Ajnesh Prasad (ajnesh_prasad@yahoo.ca)
Received: 12 December 2024 | Accepted: 15 December 2024
Keywords: gender | organization studies | transcending boundaries
ABSTRACT
In this editorial, I introduce Transcending Boundaries—the newest section of Gender, Work & Organization. Transcending
Boundaries aims to reimagine the possibilities of scholarship. It is intended to be experimental, subversive, and provocative—all
the while, unapologetically presenting ideas that dislocate the hegemonic narratives, which currently structure knowledge in
management and organization studies. This section complements the rich traditions of epistemological plurality that is palpable
in Gender, Work ‐Organization’s three‐decade publication history. It aims to resist conformity, embrace reexivity, and call for
courage in scholarship. I conclude the editorial by providing examples of the types of work—in terms of format, genre, and
creativity—that may be suitable for Transcending Boundaries and discussing governance matters and procedural issues related
to the section.
1
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Introducing the Transcending Boundaries
Section
It is with much gratitude that I introduce Transcending Bound-
aries—a new section of Gender, Work & Organization. Building on
the editorial vision of the current editors‐in‐chief of the journal,
this section is a further attempt to “holistically embrace diverse
approaches” of doing scholarship on gender, work, and organi-
zation (Wood, Vershinina, and Bastian 2024, 2306).
Transcending Boundaries aims to reimagine the possibilities of
scholarship. As the editor of the section, I hope to foster space
for “transgressive” work. Let me elaborate on what precisely I
mean by transgressive in the context of this newly initiated
section. Ihave long been concerned with our discipline's—
management and organization studies (MOS)—xation with the
theoretical contribution. As someone who was trained outside
of the business school prior to entering the PhD program and as
someone who publishes research in non‐business academic
journals, I can attest that our discipline's obsession with the
theoretical contribution is not representative of how things are
done in other social science elds. This obsession has become
unhealthy to such an extent that I recently asked: Is the theo-
retical contribution a means to an end or has the theoretical
contribution become an end in and of itself (Prasad 2023b).
Unfortunately, it appears that the latter is the case. Indeed,
today it is virtually impossible to publish in a high‐rated journal
in the eld of MOS without offering an explicit and substantive
theoretical contribution.
With the Transcending Boundaries section, I hope to loosen the
shackles imposed on our scholarship by the obstinate demand
for a theoretical contribution. While this is certainly not to say
that pieces published in this section will actively go against the
current of theory advancement, what I will be particularly
looking for in submissions are the “a‐ha” moments that make
manuscripts interesting to read. By “a‐ha” moments, I refer to
whether a piece can invoke revelatory insights that will compel
readers to pause, to reect, and to engage with pertinent issues
concerning gender, work, and organization.
© 2025 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Gender, Work & Organization, 2025; 00:1–41 of 4
https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.13234
Transcending Boundaries is intended to be experimental, sub-
versive, and provocative—all the while, unapologetically pre-
senting ideas that dislocate the hegemonic narratives, which
currently structure knowledge in MOS (and cognate disci-
plines). This section complements the rich traditions of episte-
mological plurality that is palpable in GWO's three‐decade
publication history (e.g., Ridgway, Edwards, and Oldridge 2024;
Sayers and Jones 2015; Tekeste et al. 2024; van Amster-
dam 2025). It resists conformity, embraces reexivity, and calls
for courage in scholarship.
2
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Potential Submissions
A wide range of approaches—in terms of format, genre, and
creativity—may be suitable for the Transcending Boundaries
section. Here, I identify but a few examples of approaches that
can be taken as well as cite some illustrative publications that
may be consulted as sources of inspiration. Admittedly, some of
these examples are indicative of the types of work that I have
pursued over the past few years, often inuenced by Donna
Haraway's idea of cyborg writing (Prasad 2016). Other examples,
though, reect nonconformist scholarly work from various ac-
ademics that have pushed us to think deeper about the possi-
bilities of scholarship.
2.1
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Curations
Contributions in which several scholars come together to
comment on a specic matter of concern. Ana Maria Peredo
assembled a group of socially conscientious scholars to reect
on how the global pandemic has exposed the role of business in
creating or exacerbating the preexisting social injustices that
have historically stratied society (Peredo et al. 2022). This
curated piece illuminated how the pandemic had inequitable
impacts on different classes of people. Similarly, in this journal,
I asked several male academics from different geographical lo-
cations and at different career stages to respond to the question:
What should be men's roles and responsibilities in the feminist
project for gender egalitarianism? It showed how different men
academics are engaging in myriad social and discursive acts to
level out the playing eld between women and men (Prasad
et al. 2021).
2.2
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Collaboration With Practitioners/Activists
Contributions in which scholar(s) coproduce research through
collaborative efforts with practitioners or activists directly
affected by the phenomenon under study. In a recent article on
how corporate social responsibility initiatives paradoxically so-
lidify and attenuate an indigenous community's collective
identity, Rajiv Maher collaborated with an indigenous activist
from that community to actively coproduce knowledge—thus,
moving away from the standard scholarly perspective that a
research site is simply an object of study. Such a collaborative
effort represents, concomitantly (1) a meaningful response to
the longstanding accusation that social science research—
especially that which studies marginalized communities—is
exploitative and extractive and (2) creates spaces in scholar-
ship that are generative and “epistemically respectful” (Maher
and Loncopan 2024, 908).
2.3
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Conversations Between Scholars
Dialogical pieces between scholars discussing issues of mutual
concern. An excellent example of such a conversation is Peter
Fleming and Cliff Oswick's (2014) interview with public intel-
lectual and MIT linguistics professor, Noam Chomsky. The
interview introduced (to those in MOS who were unfamiliar)
Chomsky's enlightening ideas on the role of (business school)
education within the prevailing system of neoliberal capitalism.
Similarly, during the global pandemic, Ghazal Zulqar and I
had the good fortune to have an in‐depth conversation with
political scientist Cynthia Enloe. The conversation revealed,
among other things, her insightful perspectives about race, the
pandemic and the nature of feminist solidarity (Prasad and
Zulqar 2021). These articles have not only advanced debates on
important organizational phenomena, but have also established
a scholarly trajectory through which to escape our disciplinary
silos. Indeed, such dialogical pieces have broken through such
silos by nurturing spaces for cross‐disciplinary conversations.
2.4
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Against the Grain
Go against the grain and dislocate popular thinking in MOS
scholarship. There are certain knowledge claims that are so
taken‐for‐granted that they almost enter the realm of ‘F'act. Yet,
we know that any social phenomenon, however seemingly
immutable, is subject to change—to undoing. When Ghazal
Zulqar and I studied toilet cleaners in Pakistan, we were struck
by how the concept of “dirty work”, which over the past 25 years
has come to be codied in the extant MOS literature as work
that is agentic and esteem enhancing, did not reect what we
were witnessing through our informants. Indeed, we found that
the institutional and the cultural arrangements in postcolonial
Pakistan were such that doing dirty work was neither a source
of agency nor esteem enhancement. This led us to (1) argue for
more context‐specic organization theories, and (2) animate the
claim that theories and knowledge produced in the Global
North often fall apart if they are to be applied to Global South
contexts without due contextual consideration (Zulqar and
Prasad 2022). An against the grain piece can be subversive for it
challenges conventional thinking by delivering a compelling
case—through evidence and argumentation—against concepts,
ideas, and assumptions that have become taken‐for‐granted.
2.5
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Life Narratives
Deep and grounded engagement through the life narrative
approach of a single informant. Helena Liu (2022) offers a
moving account of an Australian academic who experienced
workplace injury and encountered a troubling lack of care from
her university employer as well as the occupational health and
safety actors involved in handling her case. More recently, in
this journal, dos Santos and colleagues (2024) present a situated
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description of how one academic's sexuality and race intersected
to subject him to marginalization and violence. Both examples
offer vivid illustrations concerning the neoliberal university's
disinterest in caring for its academics. For obvious reasons, such
pieces will not be assessed on the traditional qualitative criteria,
such as if theoretical saturation has been achieved. Rather the
focus will be on whether insights emerging from a narrative
piece can profoundly catalyze a rethinking of the discourse(s) in
which it is engaging.
2.6
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Provocations
Intended to provoke and counter hegemonic narratives. Excel-
lent examples of such contributions are recent articles from
Banu Ozkazanc‐Pan (2024) and Milena Tekeste and Mustafa
Ozbilgin (2024) critiquing the recent mass resignation of
Gender, Work & Organization's previous editorial team. In each
of these articles, the authors provide counter perspectives to the
hegemonic narrative propagated by senior members of the
journal's previous editorial team. These counter perspectives are
crucial for a multitude of reasons. Not least among these reasons
is to represent the voices of those who had been silenced or most
detrimentally affected—purposefully or inadvertently—by the
circulating hegemonic narrative as well as the coordinated ac-
tions that followed aimed at delegitimating the journal.
2.7
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Popular Culture
Learning from and using popular culture—for example, lms,
television series, literature, and music—as empirical resources.
Alessia Contu (2023) revisits the Greek mythology about
Antigone to develop important insights on how contemporary
leaders can make better decisions. In doing so, she offers per-
spectives on leadership that is fresh and thought‐provoking and
which, in my option, unsettles the staleness that has come to
mark the subeld of leadership studies. Also inspired by the
utility of popular culture, I critically analyzed the Netix series,
The Chair, to conceptualize the plethora of ways through which
racism is codied into the workplace experiences of those who
constitute the “model minority” (Prasad 2023a). Without the
benet of having conducted empirical interviews or surveys of
the model minority population, the series proffered me with a
resource from which to analyze and to develop new theories
about the experiences of this understudied group.
2.8
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Arts‐based Approaches
Employing creative materials and genres, such as visuals, po-
etry, and prose, to capture complex social conditions and lived
realities. On this front, Sadhvi Dar (2019) presents a revisionist
narration of Ben Jonson's seventeenth‐century Jacobean play,
The Masque of Blackness [1605]. In doing so, she poignantly
captures the limitations of diversity in academia. Through
the play, Dar reveals how, for instance, universities while pur-
porting otherwise, exert discursive pressures onto academics of
color to assimilate them into the prevailing hegemonic struc-
tures of whiteness. As a reader, Dar's creative recounting of the
Masque of Blackness compelled me to ask myself the question,
so inspired by Audre Lorde: Can the master's tools dismantle
the master's house?
This is an illustrative rather than an exhaustive list of ap-
proaches that could be appropriate for this section. As such, I
welcome other approaches not described here. Transcending
Boundaries is, as its name suggests, ostensibly aimed to push
boundaries, destabilize the inertia in scholarly frameworks and
writing, and be motivated by the boundless possibilities of our
community's individual and collective creativity. With that said,
it remains critical that any submission made to this section
broadly, though meaningfully, contributes to the remit of
Gender, Work & Organization.
3
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Submission Process and Governance Matters
Submissions to the Transcending Boundaries section may be
solicited or unsolicited. First, I will be inviting certain in-
dividuals to write manuscripts for this section. These “exem-
plary” contributions will be inspired by two considerations: (1) I
will invite those who I believe have something worth sharing
with, and will be of interest to, the readership of Gender, Work &
Organization, and (2) I will invite those whose contributions
will, in my opinion, animate the broad potential of Tran-
scending Boundaries and, thereby, catalyze interest and
encourage submissions from others to this section.
Second, I encourage potential authors who are interested in
contributing to this section to submit a short proposal to me. In
the proposal of no more than 500 words, prospective authors are
asked to do three things:
⇣offer a summary or overview of their contribution
⇣justify how it relates to the remit of Gender, Work & Or-
ganization, and
⇣describe the format it is intended to take
In terms of the process, proposals should be submitted through
Gender, Work & Organization's Research Exchange submissions
portal (https://wiley.scienceconnect.io/login) using the Tran-
scending Boundaries option for article type. Once a proposal is
submitted to Transcending Boundaries, I will review it and get
back to authors with my decision within approximately 30 days.
Should the proposal be accepted, the authors will have a revise‐
and‐resubmit option available to them through the Research
Exchange submissions portal, which should be used to submit
the full manuscript.
I will underscore, here, that my acceptance of any proposal does
not assure publication as nal editorial decisions will ultimately
be based on a review of the full manuscript (and, as required,
the recommendation[s] from members of the Transcending
Boundaries' editorial review board). Given the types of manu-
scripts that are anticipated to be submitted to this section, a
double‐blind review process will often not be tenable and,
therefore, will not apply. However, the purpose of the section's
editorial review board is to have a pool of scholars that can be
drawn on to inform editorial decisions. If a manuscript is
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referred to members of the editorial board, it will be only done
so for one round. That is, an editorial decision of “accept”,
“conditionally accept”, “minor revision”, or “reject” will be
delivered to authors after one round of review. Submissions of
full manuscripts made to the section without rst having
received an accepted proposal will be summarily desk rejected.
Submissions to the Transcending Boundaries section should
closely follow the journal's stylistic instructions (e.g., citation and
reference formatting). However, a word count is not imposed on
this section. Instead, the length of the manuscript will be assessed
in relation to the substantiveness of its contribution.
I will handle full manuscripts after proposal acceptance. In the
coming months, the journal will be expanding the editorial re-
view board to include members dedicated to the Transcending
Boundaries section. As the section editor, I will draw on these
members of the editorial review board on an “as needed” basis
regarding editorial decisions. The editorial review board dedi-
cated to this section will initially be small, but I anticipate that it
will expand as submissions to the section grows over time.
I am grateful for the opportunity to establish this new section at
Gender, Work & Organization. I view Transcending Boundaries
as another avenue for this journal to expand its diversity by
including a greater spectrum of voices from the community. I
eagerly look forward to receiving submissions from prospective
authors. Anyone with inquiries related to the section is
encouraged to reach out to me.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the co‐editors‐in‐chief of Gender, Work & Organization,
Bettina Bastian, Natalia Vershinina, and Bronwyn Wood, for inviting
me to develop this section and for offering thoughtful comments on an
earlier draft of this piece.
Data Availability Statement
The author has nothing to report
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