EXPRESS: Royston-isms: Lifelong Provocations from a Noted Organization Theorist

Royston Greenwood (1944-2026) was a founder of Strategic Organization and one of the field’s most original, influential and appreciated organizational theorists. We pay tribute to his contribution to the field by highlighting and reflecting on some of his most insightful and pithy provocations that we label “Royston-isms.” These include both public reflections that distill his approach to scholarship and theorizing more generally (Where’s the organization? Know your rat. What’s the aha?), as well as more private and personal Royston-isms that he used in interactions with colleagues, co-authors, students and mentees (Is this institutional? Why are you studying that?! You don’t want to be just a methodologist. Just get on with it!). We show how these Royston-isms were enacted in Royston’s own work, we relate them to ideas from the philosophy of science, and we argue for their ongoing relevance to scholars of strategic organization.