Grand challenges such as climate change or poverty alleviation require sustained effort from multiple stakeholders toward a clearly articulated goal. Characterized by deeper complexity, uncertainty, and evaluativity, these challenges urge management scholars to engage in pragmatist minded research, especially to address shortcomings of the dominant theoretical perspective on corporate responses to grand challenges: stakeholder theory. In fact, a major pitfall of the stakeholder theory is its difficulty to deal with highly pluralist and complex environments, where stakeholders are not clearly identified or do not feel concerned. Drawing on John Dewey’s work, this article seeks to further develop the notion of commoning as a specific form of inquiry which leads to the conjoint emergence of a community of plural individuals and a vision of the common good. Departing from an abstract and transcendental vision of the common good, our empirical case on the Incredible Edible movement sheds light on this processual conception of the common good.
