About

Martha S. Feldman is the Johnson Chair for Civic Governance and Public Management and a Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, Management, Political Science, and Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. She earned her PhD from Stanford University in 1983. Her research focuses on organization theory and behavior, particularly the stability and change in organizations, decision making, information processing, public management, and qualitative research methods. She explores organizational routines, their role in creating, maintaining, and altering organizational phenomena, and the dynamics of organizational routines as a source of change and stability. Feldman has received numerous awards for her scholarly contributions, including the Administrative Science Quarterly's 2009 award for Scholarly Contribution, the 2011 Academy of Management Practice Scholarship Award, and an Honorary Doctorate in Economics from the University of St. Gallen School of Management in 2014. She was named a Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters in 2014 and 2015, and she is a Fellow of the Academy of Management. Her work has significantly contributed to understanding organizational routines, inclusive management, and public management practices, with a focus on collaborative boundary work, participation, and inclusion in public organizations.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Epistemology
• Engineering
• Management science
• Mathematics
• Social Science
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Theoretical computer science
• Engineering ethics
• Knowledge management
• Data science

Selected publications

• Tackling Grand Challenges: Insights and Contributions From Practice Theories

  Journal of Management Inquiry · 2025-01-29 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access

  This curated debate discusses the value of practice theories in studying, understanding and tackling grand challenges. Practice theories assume that social phenomena are constituted through everyday doings and sayings. Building on this premise, the different contributions in this curated debate go beyond the assumption that grand challenges are abstract phenomena. The authors argue that grand challenges are enacted through mundane, situated actions that are often hidden in plain sight. Building on their research, they suggest that understanding grand challenges requires scholars to approach phenomena as nondualistic. Accordingly, they reveal that situated actions are not self-contained but related across space and time, requiring scholars to adopt a relational perspective. The debate concludes with a call for action as we embrace our dual role as scholars and citizens.

  PublisherDOI

• Vocal Deliriums (Five Proposals)

  Critical Inquiry · 2025-09-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Castrato as Subject, Dead or Alive

  Portable Gray · 2025-09-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Routine Dynamics and Connections to Strategy as Practice

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-01-23

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice

  2023-11-04 · 2 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Practices of Resourcing and Its Implications

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

  article

  Resourcing defined as “the creation in practice of assets such as people, time, money, knowledge, or skill; and qualities of relationships such as trust, authority, or complementarity such that they enable actors to enact schemas” (Feldman, 2004, p. 296), is an important concept in organization studies and is relevant to a range of fields including strategy, entrepreneurship, and organization theory. The concept of resourcing suggests that assets are potential resources that become actual resources through actions. This panel symposium brings together a panel of experts in the field of management who will address the importance of resourcing and its relevance to their respective fields. They will delve into various aspects of resourcing, such as how actors define and redefine resources, the role of material objects in the resourcing process, and the impact of social constraints on resourcing. The panelists will also discuss the potential effects of resourcing on agency, power and conflict, and the emergence of a new social order. Through their insights and experiences, the panelists will shed light on how the practices of resourcing have broader organizational and societal implications.

  PublisherDOI

• A Curated Debate: On Using “Templates” in Qualitative Research

  Journal of Management Inquiry · 2022-05-12 · 98 citations

  articleOpen access

  One of the raging debates in organization study concerns the use of “templates” in qualitative research. This curated debate brings together many of the players in that debate, who make statements of position relative to the issues involved and trade accusations and counter-accusations about statements they have made that in their view have been misinterpreted or misconstrued. Overall, it is quite a lively debate that reveals positions, points of tension and grounds for disagreement. Denny Gioia wrote the triggering essay that prompted other players to weigh in with their personal and professional views.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Practice Perspectives on Grand Challenges: Insights from SAP and Routine Dynamics Research

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2022-07-06

  article

  The symposium discusses the value of practice theory in understanding and tackling grand challenges. It engages Martha Feldman and Brian Pentland as leading scholars from ‘Routine Dynamics’ research as well as Paula Jarzabkowski and Linda Rouleau as leading scholars from research on ‘Strategizing Activities and Practices’ to unpack the possible contributions that those two scientific communities can provide in the context of grand challenges. Subsequently, Kathleen Sutcliffe and Joel Gehman critically reflect on the value and drawbacks of practice theory in studying grand challenges. The symposium intends to stimulate research which applies practice theory to grand challenges.

  PublisherDOI

• Routine dynamics: Toward a critical conversation

  Strategic Organization · 2022-09-26 · 40 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In this essay, we suggest new research directions for the study of routines that intersect with and draw upon conversations about the reproduction of privilege and oppression as a strategic issue in organizations. We focus on how social inequality is reproduced and normalized by routines. We describe and illustrate how analyzing the dynamics of organizational routines can help us understand the production and reproduction of social inequality and the possibility of amelioration.

  PublisherDOI

• Fugitive Voice

  Representations · 2021-01-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This essay proposes that current-day notions of fugitivity, understood in the terms Fred Moten proposes as a category of the irregular that escapes easy representations and predications, can undiscipline music histories in productive ways. Among these: it can inflect musicological thinking through attention to sonic remainders of haunted pasts; it can decenter understandings of the aesthetic; and it can lead to more nuanced thinking about the imbrication of music in an “undercommons” of life that refuses ever to fully sound in harmony, residing instead in a disordered space of restless, noisy sound. The essay asks, finally, how such thinking, developed by Moten, Nathaniel Mackey, and Daphne Brooks, among others, can remake aspects of musicological thinking about voice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Brian T. Pentland

  30 shared

• Ann Langley

  28 shared

• Haridimos Tsoukas

  28 shared

• David M. Bøje

  27 shared

• Eero Vaara

  University of Oxford

  21 shared

• Luciana D’Adderio

  University of Edinburgh

  19 shared

• Robert Chia

  Adam Smith Institute

  15 shared

• A. D. Brown

  12 shared

Awards & honors

• Administrative Science Quarterly's 2009 award for Scholarly…
• 2011 Academy of Management Practice Scholarship Award
• Honorary Doctorate in Economics from the University of St. G…
• Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers (2014)
• Academy of Management Distinguished Scholar for the Organiza…