Abstract
This conceptual paper examines existential threats to human, organisational and societal existence and using significant contributions from an interdisciplinary theoretical and research field from ecology to business and management and organisational transformation, change, and development (OTCD) scholarship. Drawing from epistemological panarchy theory, a theoretical framework is developed for OTCD research. The new framework identifies five areas of societal-organisational-environmental sensitivities and proposes a three-phase embedded approach for its implementation, namely 1) emergence, 2) acceleration, and 3) stabilization. These help to facilitate greater and scalar increases towards not only a fundamental paradigmatic shift in epistemological thinking from decreasing returns to one focusing on increasing returns on ideas-driven growth but also greater societal good. We extend Solow, Lucas, Romer, and Jones’s models to extend experiential matrix theory, highlighting some emergent properties of transformational business and societal processes and suggesting areas of future research endeavour in this emerging field.