EGOS 2019 Call for Short Papers: »Open Organizing for an Open Society?«

Logo of the 35th EGOS Colloquium in Edinburgh, UK

The 35th EGOS Colloquium will take place from July 4–6, 2019 in Edinburgh, UK, and for the third time after 2015 in Athens and 2017 in Copenhagen Georg von Krogh (ETH Zürich), Richard Whittington (Oxford University) and I will convene a sub-theme on organizational openness. Please find the Call for Short Papers (about 3.000 words) of sub-theme 55 on “Open Organizing for an Open Society? Connecting Research on Organizational Openness” below, submission deadline is January 14, 2019:

Discussions around open organizing date back to the 1950s, when organizations were conceptualized as open systems interdependent with their environments (e.g. Boulding, 1956). However, recent developments have seen openness recast as an organizing principle in a wide range of domains. Indeed, Tkacz (2012, p. 400) describes contemporary advanced societies as undergoing a “second coming of openness”. Thus we see the apparent rise of phenomena such as open innovation (Chesbrough, 2006), open strategy (Hautz et al., 2017), open software development (von Hippel & von Krogh, 2006), open government (Janssen et al., 2012), open science (Nosek et al., 2015), and open education (Seely et al., 2008).

While there is growing reference to notions of openness across domains, these are largely disconnected from each other, show few signs of convergence and lack theoretical reference between domains. This fragmentation is even more marked when considering related notions such as organizational fluidity (Dobusch & Schoenborn, 2015), liquidity (Kociatkiewicz & Kostera, 2014), boundlessness (Ashkenas et al., 2002) and partiality (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2011). Alongside these notions, advanced societies appear also to be seeing the emergence of more open organizational forms such as crowds (Felin et al., 2014), communities (Faraj et al., 2016), ecosystems (Baldwin, 2012) or meta-organizations (Gulati et al., 2012). A central objective of the proposed sub-theme will be to bring together discussions of various forms of open organizing in order to explore possible commonalities and significant distinctions, and to develop means for more connected theorizing across domains and dimensions. Continue reading “EGOS 2019 Call for Short Papers: »Open Organizing for an Open Society?«” →

Call for the International Spring School »Organized Creativity: Approaching a Phenomenon of Uncertainty«

Creativity is one of the key concepts, yet among the most slippery ones of present-day Western societies. Today, the call for creativity spans far beyond typically “creative” fields and industries towards becoming a universal social norm. Creative processes, however, are fundamentally surrounded by uncertainty. It is difficult to know ex-ante what will become a creative idea and, due to its destructive force, it is also highly contested. This inherent uncertainty associated with creativity thus spills over to other social spheres, too.

The DFG-funded Research Unit “Organized Creativity” is studying creative processes in music and pharmaceuticals – as representatives for creativity in the arts and in the sciences. The goal of the unit is to understand in greater depth those practices of inducing and coping with uncertainty which are employed by various actors involved in creative processes. In this context, we invite applications to a Spring School on “Organized Creativity: Approaching a Phenomenon of Uncertainty” (PDF  of the Call for Papers). Continue reading “Call for the International Spring School »Organized Creativity: Approaching a Phenomenon of Uncertainty«” →

Break-out Session and Plenary Panel at European Forum Alpbach 2018

This year I will – for the very first time – take part in the European Forum Alpbach, specifically in its “Technology Symposium”. I will speak in two sessions:

  • In the Break-out Session “Consequences of digital monocultures on societies” I will give a talk on “Digital Media between Neutrality and Polarization”. The session takes place on Friday, August 24, 1.00-6.00 p.m. at the Hauptschule Alpbach.
  • On Saturday, August 25, 10:50-11:50 a.m. I will discuss, amongst others, with the Director General of the Austrian public broadcaster Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF) Alexander Wrabetz in a Plenary Panel Session on “The resilience of democracy and democratic media“. [Update, 21.09.2018] The video of the debate is is now available online. [/Update]

Both sessions will be in German. In case anyone reading this blog is in Alpbach these days, I would be happy to meet & chat.

Looking back on the Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2018 in Chicago

As usual, healthy food is one of the best things about any visit to the US, here together with Blagoy Blagoev (University of Lüneburg), Maximilian Heimstädt (University of Witten/Herdecke) and my sister and co-author Laura (Radboud University, Nijmegen, NL)

Every other year (see post on the last visit in 2016) I enjoy taking part in the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, the world’s largest conference for management and organization studies scholars. This year the conference took place in Chicago. The following list is about my main activities there:

Interestingly and as a potential long-term save-the-date, the Academy of Management announced that for the first time in its history, the conference will take place in Europe – more specifically, in Copenhagen – in 2025. I am really looking forward to this event, albeit being curious how Copenhagen will manage to cope with hosting so many management and organization scholars at once. Probably should already think about booking a hotel room.. 😉

Fake Science and Predatory Journals: Antidote Open Peer Review?

Is Open Peer Review an Antidote against predatory publishers? (Credit: SarahRichterArt, CC0)

Digitalization reduces technological and financial barriers to scientific publishing. Science can thus become faster, more inclusive and more plural. At the same time, the growing acceptance of specific forms of Open Access has also led to the rise of author-pays business models based on Article Processing Charges (APCs). The increasing publication pressure in the scientific system in combination with APCs provides incentives for creating “predatory” journals that only supposedly or very superficially conduct peer review in order to maximize their profits from such APCs. These manuscripts are at best inadequate and at worst deliberately tendentious and misleading.

Recently, an investigative report by the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and public broadcasters WDR and NDR has revealed that even researchers from reputable academic institutions publish in or represent publishers of dubious quality. In their attempt to reveal “Fake Science” (using the English term in their German reportings), journalists easily accomplished the publication of a non-sensical article in an allegedly peer reviewed journal charging APCs. What they also show is how these unscientific practices not just harm the reputation of legitimate open access journals but are also a potential source – and allegedly scientific proof – for fake news more generally.

This blogpost discusses how reputable (Open Access) journals can defend their credibility against somewhat or even completely dubious Open Access journals. In our opinion, the most sustainable response, which however would only be possible in the mid to long-term, would be to abandon author-pays business models altogether and switch to publication infrastructures financed by universities and institutions (for an example of such an approach, check out the Open Library of Humanities). In the short-term, however, certain open-peer review practices might also be helpful to address the problem of predatory open access journals.

>> Read the remainder of the full post at governance across borders

Rückblick: 4. Kölner Forum für Journalismuskritik

Foto: Jann Höfer/Deutschlandradio

Am Freitag, 22. Juni 2018, durfte ich im Rahmen des 4. Kölner Forums für Journalismuskritik, veranstaltet von der Initiative Nachrichtenaufklärung und dem Deutschlandfunk unter dem Titel “Über Gebühr gut?” zum Thema Zukunft des öffentlich-rechtlichen Angebots im Internet diskutieren. Moderiert vom Medienjournalisten Daniel Bouhs saßen Heike Raab, Staatssekretärin in Rheinland-Pfalz und eine der zentralen deutschen MedienpolitikerInnen, Valdo Lehari, Vizepräsident des Bundesverbands Deutscher Zeitungsverleger und als Hausherr Deutschlandradio-Intendant Stefan Raue mit mir am Podium.

Die gesamte Diskussion ist als MP3-Datei zum Nachhören online verfügbar. Außerdem wurde das Blog netzpolitik.org, bei dem ich auch regelmäßig als Autor vertreten bin, am Ende der Veranstaltung mit dem diesjährigen “Günther-Wallraff-Preis für Journalismuskritik” ausgezeichnet. Gründer und Chefredakteur Markus Beckedahl nahm den Preis stellvertretend für die gesamte Redaktion vom Namensgeber selbst entgegen.

Kick-off Event of the Doctoral Program »Organizing the Digital: Relations, Publics, Societies«

Andrea Hemetsberger and I, together with ten other founding faculty members from various departments at the University of Innsbruck, are very happy to invite everyone interested in the newly founded Doctoral Program “Organizing the Digital: Relations, Publics, Societies” to a kick-off event on June 26, 17:30, at the Dekanatssitzungssaal der Theologischen Fakultät (Karl-Rahner-Platz 1, 1. Stock).

The opening guest lecture will be given by sociologist Jan-Hendrik Passoth (Technical University of Munich) on the topic “Cultures of Calculation.
Software, Data and Algorithms in Contemporary Society”.  After this lecture we will focus on the planned activities of the doctoral program and expectations provided by potential doctoral students.

Download of the whole program of the event.