16. 30th birthday celebrations: Views from the top about future management research and practice

Ratten, V., Newman, A., Palacios-Marqués, D., Mckeown, T., Casais, B., Prentice, C., Nuñez-Sánchez, J. M., Liñán, F., Stanton, P., Le, H., Aseri, M. A., & Walton, S. (2026). 30th birthday celebrations: Views from the top about future management research and practice. In Journal of Management and Organization. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2025.10073This article commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Journal of Management & Organization by gathering reflections from leading scholars on the past achievements and future directions of management research. It emphasizes the societal importance of management studies in fostering organizational effectiveness, evidence-based decision-making, and sustainable development. Influential contributions highlighted include stakeholder theory, psychological safety, exploration versus exploitation, and service-dominant logic, all of which reshaped modern management thinking. The discussion underscores management as an evolving, interdisciplinary field, while warning against the “ivory tower” gap between academia and practice and advocating for more engaged scholarship. Looking ahead, the field is expected to be transformed by artificial intelligence, human–technology integration, hybrid work models, and sustainability-driven business models. Ethical governance of algorithms and the redesign of organizations to enhance human capabilities will be central concerns. The article concludes that, as AI automates technical tasks, management may experience a renaissance as an art grounded in judgment, empathy, and ethical leadership.