Theorizing imaginary emergence: Insights from the field of social impact

Imaginaries are shared visions that reflect how people perceive social reality and guide ways of thinking and acting. As interest in “seeing the future” grows, imaginaries are gaining more attention in organizational studies, especially in relation to societal challenges. Yet, we still know little about how they originate within contested fields. To address this gap, we build upon the Cultural Political Economy approach to advance a processual framework involving three dynamics—structural interruption, discursive interaction, and material resonance—that facilitate the emergence of new imaginaries. We interweave examples from the social impact field to illustrate how the framework operates in real-world contexts. This paper contributes to imaginaries research by theorizing the constitutive dynamics through which imaginaries emerge. It also advances broader organizational scholarship by deepening understanding of organizational future-making and offering critical insights into how organizations engage with grand challenges.