Dear colleagues,

This special issue of Management Revue builds on the 2024 Luhmann Conference theme, “Guiding distinctions. Observed with social systems theory”. It explores how influential distinctions—such as structure/agency, strategy/culture, or shareholder/stakeholder—shape theory-building and empirical research in management and organisation studies.

As digital transformation accelerates, our field must go beyond analogue descriptions of digital developments. While digital methods are advancing rapidly, theory development lags behind. This creates a mismatch: we increasingly test old theories with new tools, yet often fail to theorise in ways that match the logic and potential of the very transformation we study.

To address this gap, contributions to this issue aim to show how a focus on the guiding distinctions of our fields can advance the development of truly digital management and organisation theories. In so doing, they invite readers to engage with the question of how management and organisation research can keep pace with its own digitalisation.

Steffen Roth, Lars Clausen, Margit Neisig and Augusto Sales
Guest Editors