Creating Long-Term Impact in a World That Requires Short-Term Results: What Is Missing from Academic Discourse on Systems Change

Abstract

This essay explores a critical but underexamined challenge in systems change work: the disconnect between the long-term nature of meaningful impact and the short-term structures that shape how social and environmental efforts are funded, evaluated, and executed. Practitioners navigating complex problems feel this tension acutely, often making constrained decisions about feasibility, framing, and measurement under short-term pressures. The coauthors bring complementary expertise: one is an academic publishing on systems thinking in organization studies, aware of the literature’s theoretical sophistication but practical blind spots; the other is a practitioner with a PhD in systems thinking and two decades of experience across military, governmental, and nonprofit contexts worldwide. While systems thinking is widely promoted in both academic and managerial domains, the lived realities of practicing it remain idealized and insufficiently studied. This essay identifies three practical challenges: (1) funding systems change on short timelines, (2) scoping and evaluating systems work in real time, and (3) navigating power asymmetries between funders, beneficiaries, and consultants. Without deeper inquiry into the organizational and relational conditions shaping systems practice, organizational scholars risk drifting from relevance, favoring short-term, easy-to-measure results over the deep, systemic changes needed to tackle complex problems. More evidence-based research by organizational scholars is urgently needed.