As the world of business still struggles through the COVID-19 pandemic, business and management theories and practices are being reimagined and reconfigured to address the pandemic’s seismic footprint on work. During the last couple of years many businesses were challenged by the COVID-19 related restrictions, supply chains have been disrupted, hospitality and retail interface with customers were transfixed, both K-12 and higher education sectors changed immensely and adopted virtual and hybrid modes of delivery at a speed previously unthinkable, and many companies revisited distance working options and made it available to their employees.

At such unchartered and evolving times, it is among the callings of management theory and practice to lead, shape, and advocate innovation, efficiency, and performance as drivers of success in all forms and sizes of organizations, in all sectors, and in all countries.  Many experts predict the changes experienced in these pandemic years will transform the way we live and work permanently. Moreover, there is conjecture that such changes will both recur and do so ever more rapidly going forward.

As organizations try to adapt and respond to technological, demographic, and market transformations, managers, employees, and stakeholders increasingly are called upon to envision “new normal” that find opportunity in such ever-faster and ever-larger disruptions. Managers in particular will be relied on to unleash and corral the agility, imagination, ambidexterity, inclusivity, and sustainability that conceiving and implementing such pathways entails.

Whatever shape the new normal takes, business as usual has been affected in lasting ways. Stakeholder and market expectations and needs are uncertain, novel, complex, and unfolding. Reflecting this the creation, implementation, analysis, and application of management thinking to these contemporary upended realities remain territory important for management scholars and practitioners to navigate and chart.

Best management practice recognizes and champions that with change and challenge come opportunity. SAM’s 77^th Anniversary International Business Conference theme –– Advancing Management in the Rapidly Changing World – is dedicated to exploring and contributing findings and recommendations to this central and current aspect of management practice and education. Academic, practitioner, and student researchers are invited to present business insights at this 2022 Conference, and so collaborate in advancing the management opportunity of shaping new normal that build even better futures.