Imaginaries of organizations and markets in (un)livable worlds

This special issue invites conversations that bridge organization studies with marketing theory to examine how imaginaries that scaffold and inspire organizational processes shape and are shaped by livable and unlivable worlds. Imaginaries affect how organizations, markets, and societies are organized. Imaginaries offer "collective projections of a desirable and feasible future" (Benjamin, 2024, p. vii; Taylor, 2004). They are not merely abstract representations, but shared frameworks that frame the ways people live, work, and organize. In the current conjuncture, we witness a ‘crisis of imagination1' (Haiven, 2014). Or, what Rivera Cusicanqui (2020) called a ‘colonization of the imaginary.' Even as we encounter manifold political, social, economic, and ecological crises that render this world unlivable, our responses to these remain enclosed within dominant neoliberal imaginaries.