ConJunction

EGOS 2024 Call for Short Papers: »Reorganizing Knowledge Practices in the Digital Era: Driven by Data, Out in the Open?«

The 40th EGOS Colloquium will take place from July 4-6, 2024, in Milan, Italy, and I am very happy to co-convene a sub-theme with Anne K. Krüger (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities) and Neil Pollock (University of Edinburgh Business School, UK). Please find the Call for Short Papers (about 3.000 words) of sub-theme 61 on “Reorganizing Knowledge Practices in the Digital Era: Driven by Data, Out in the Open?” below, submission deadline is January 09, 2024. Please also have a look at the submission guidelines.

Organizations produce, offer and structure knowledge that not only provides us with new insights but also triggers new developments. They display information that is supposed to support decision-making of people, enterprises, or politicians ranging from statistic reports, e.g. on demographic developments (Desrosières 1998), evaluation, e.g. of the credit-worthiness of individuals and nation states (Besedovsky 2018; Kiviat 2019) or of the performance of hospitals (Reilley and Scheytt 2019) and prisons (Mennicken 2013) to rankings of start-ups (Pollock and D’Adderio 2012), universities (Espeland and Sauder 2016; Wilbers and Brankovic 2021) or entire cities (Kornberger and Carter 2010). Much of our “knowledge about the world” is provided by organizations and highly organized processes. Particularly in times of perceived uncertainty and existential environmental threats (Bacevic 2021) such knowledge is having a crucial effect on our understanding of social problems and possible solutions.

Yet, in light of mounting demands for open access, open source, open data and open science (Bacevic and Muellerleile 2018; Dobusch et al., 2023) as well as increasing accumulation of mass data and their automated analysis (Crawford 2021), digitization presents a crucial crossroad for organizational knowledge production. These developments reorganize the ways how and which kind of knowledge is produced and offered. They not only amplify the possibilities of knowledge production in organizations and of access to knowledge through organizations but also allow for entirely new and very diverse forms of organizing knowledge creation and distribution, ranging from algorithm- and AI-based to volunteer- and crowd-driven. They furthermore influence what counts as knowledge, who has the authority to provide knowledge and how this knowledge informs our decisions and perception of what counts, e.g. as a trustworthy seller (Kornberger et al. 2017), as excellent science (Krüger and Petersohn 2022) or simply as good music (Alaimo and Kallinikos 2020).

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Ö1-Radiokolleg zum Thema “Unser Geld: Wie umgehen mit Schulden?”

Das Ö1-Radiokolleg dreht sich diese Woche um das Thema “Unser Geld: Wie umgehen mit Schulden?”. In der zweiten Folge durfte ich vergleichsweise ausführlich über (unvermeidbare) Sozialisierung von Verlusten bei Insolvenzen sowie die verzögerte Wirkung von Leitzinserhöhungen für Unternehmenspleiten sprechen. Einer von mehreren O-Tönen:

“Es wird eine Zeit dauern, bis die bereits erfolgten Zinserhöhungen sich auch auswirken, weil die Unternehmen ja auch längere Laufzeiten bei ihren Krediten haben und das ganze erst dann schlagend wird, wenn der Kredit ausläuft und refinanziert werden muss, und dann auf einmal die höheren Zinskosten aber nicht unbedingt mit höheren Einnahmen korrespondieren. Das ist auch der Grund, warum man hier auch Kaskaden von Insolvenzen sehen könnte, zum Beispiel im Bereich der Immobilienwirtschaft. Warum? Wir erleben derzeit, dass im Handel, als Spätfolge von Corona, aber auch durch den allgemeinen Strukturwandel hin zum Online-Handel, diese enorm hohen Mieten, die im Bereich von guten Lagen verlangt werden, einfach für Handelsunternehmen nicht mehr refinanzierbar sind. Das bedeutet, wir sehen hier Pleiten von Handelsunternehmen oder auch nur einen Rückzug aus bestimmten Lagen, und das wird dazu führen, dass in den nächsten zwei, drei Jahren, Immobilienbesitzer vor dem Problem stehen werden, dass sie keine Nachmieter finden, die ihre Mieten in den gewünschten Höhen erzielen. Was aber dann wiederum bedeutet, dass die Mieten sinken. Und wenn die Mieten sinken, lässt sich die Bewertung von Immobilien nicht mehr aufrecht erhalten. Was bedeutet, meine Immobilie wird weniger wert. Der Kredit geht aber nicht weg, der verschwindet nicht. Und wenn ich diesen Immobilienkredit dann refinanzieren muss, meine Immobilie aber weniger wert ist, als zuvor, dann wird das nicht mehr funktionieren. Und dann führen quasi die Handelspleiten zu Beginn zu Immobilienpleiten im nächsten Schritt.”

Die ganze Folge ist noch eine Woche zum Nachhören online. (Archiv-Downloadlink)

Call for Papers: 4th OT Winter Workshop at the University of Innsbruck

We are happy to announce that we will host the 4th OT Winter Workshop from February 6-8, 2024, at the University of Innsbruck. The OT Winter Workshop aims to advance research on organizational theory and further develop potential submissions to the journal “Organization Theory” (OT). The workshop will offer detailed coaching and hands-on feedback sessions as well as plenary sessions on crucial topics with regard to developing and writing theory with the members of the OT Editorial board.

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Innsbruck goes Boston – the Academy of Management 2023 experience in a nutshell

The 83^rd annual meeting of the Academy of Management took place in Boston this year. Under the theme “Putting the Worker Front and Center”, more than 10.000 scholars and practitioners joined the conference’s professional development workshops (PDW), paper sessions, symposia, keynotes, and very importantly, its socials. Leonhard Dobusch and Milena Leybold were two of these attendees, who, among other scholars representing the University of Innsbruck, had the pleasure of enjoying a great program and Boston as a fantastic conference site. In this blog entry, they share some of their highlights. As Leonhard is this year’s chair of the Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) Interest Group (IG) and Milena part of the Social Media Committee of the Interest Group, they were both actively engaged in events organized by and for the IG.

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Call for Abstracts: “Open Strategy: Taking stock and moving forward”

University of Zurich and Oxford University’s Said Business school host a joint workshop that “aims to bring together Open Strategy scholars and practitioners to discuss ongoing and future research projects”. The workshop is scheduled for July 1-2, 2024, right before the EGOS Colloquium in Milano that year and will be located at University of Zurich.

Participation requires the submission of extended abstracts (2,000 words) by January 25, 2024 to os@business.uzh.ch.

For more information on the workshop check out the website.

Unconferencing SAP and Beyond: Impressions of the First Barcamp at the AoM Annual Meeting

Currently, the Academy of Management (AoM) hosts its Annual Meeting in Boston. The meeting is mainly organized along various Divisions and Interest Groups and follows fairly standard conference formats such as paper sessions, panels (“Symposiums”) and round table sessions. In all of these sessions, topics, speakers and facilitators are defined in advance, establishing a clear hierarchy between session organizers and speakers on the one hand, and the audience on the other hand.

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Agile practices in Open Strategy: A new approach to overcoming Open Strategy challenges and enhancing organizational decision-making

This research essay is authored by Max Heusgen, student in the master course Open Organizations and Organizing Openness at University of Innsbruck.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, organizations constantly seek methods that foster adaptability, responsiveness, and inclusivity in their strategic decision-making processes. One emerging trend is Open Strategy initiatives. Unlike traditional top-down strategies, open strategy promotes increased transparency, inclusion, and broad-based participation in strategic development, often facilitated by IT systems (Hautz et al., 2017; Tavakoli et al., 2017). However, as this openness scales, it becomes increasingly complex, leading to potential pitfalls that can hinder its execution, as evidenced by the Wikimedia Foundation (Laura Dobusch et al., 2019) and Premium Cola (Luedicke et al., 2017). Hautz et al. (2017) therefore outline the five dilemmas of process, commitment, disclosure, empowerment, and escalation. Interestingly, some companies are already reversing their open strategy approach in pursuit of greater control and profit from their innovations (Appleyard & Chesbrough, 2017).

Another prevalent trend is Agile working. Originating in software development, Agile methods prioritize flexibility, continuous improvement, and active stakeholder involvement. They are characterized by iterative development cycles and a swift response to change (Alsaqqa et al., 2020). Agile methods positively impact project success, efficiency, and stakeholder satisfaction in volatile and uncertain environments (Serrador & Pinto, 2015). The 15th State of Agile Report by Digital.ai (2022) reveals that 86% of Software Development and 63% of IT departments are working agile, with other departments like operations or production also seeing a significant increase from 2020 to 2021. Agile values align with Open Strategy on many occasions and provide tangible measures for their implementation.

The central thesis of this essay suggests that as open strategy is practiced more radically, its inherent challenges become increasingly pronounced. However, the principles and methods of Agile frameworks, known for their robust response to the complexities of software development and other areas, can offer valuable solutions to these open strategy pitfalls. This essay will introduce the values of Open Strategy and the challenges associated with scaling them in an organization. It will then explain how Agile methodologies handle these values and how Open Strategy could benefit from these practices.

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The Excluding Effects of Boundaries in the Case of English Wikipedia

(Picture taken from this blog post on “Diversity in Wikipedia”)

This research essay is authored by Eva-Maria Schillinger, student in the master course Open Organizations and Organizing Openness at University of Innsbruck.

As a worldwide, open and collaborative knowledge sharing platform, Wikipedia has largely replaced the need for physical encyclopedias for many. From children using it for their first school presentations to university professors and academics, the readership is broad and diverse. And since Wikipedia prides itself on being an open-for-anyone space for collaboration, you would think that the large community of editors and contributors should be similar in diversity, but this is not the case. While there are multiple dimensions of diversity that could be examined in the case of Wikipedia, gender is the most visible and prominent facet. But not only diversity among users is more scarce than expected, furthermore there is a lack of inclusivity of perspectives and alternative opinions, which in some cases can lead to misrepresentation. Recognizing the lack of diversity among editors and the resulting bias in the content displayed is crucial for making attempts to increase inclusivity in both areas, which according to Wikipedia’s principle of equality should be the goal of the organization and its vast community. Finding the causes for this exclusion is the next step. This essay will examine potential exclusionary effects of boundaries around and within Wikipedia and how they inhibit inclusivity for both contributors and content. In total, four boundaries and their potential for exclusion are discussed. The focus lies on the English version of Wikipedia to keep an appropriate scope.

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Inspiring input, exhausting heat, and dolce vita! A short summary of the 39th EGOS Colloquium 2023 in Cagliari

Last week, Monica Nadegger, Katharina Zangerle, and Milena Leybold (University of Innsbruck, Department for Organization and Learning) traveled to the beautiful island Sardegna to meet for four days with around 2000 people at the Colloquium of the European Group of Organization Studies.

From the left: Monica Nadegger, Milena Leybold, Katharina Zangerle

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Discussion Proposal: Increasing Vaccine Access in a Shorter Time

As we have all experienced recently, to prevent pandemic outbreaks or mitigate an evolving pandemic crisis, it is of utmost importance to guarantee timely and global access to safe and effective vaccines. Through their pre-print, Milena Leybold (University of Innsbruck) and Konstantin Hondros (University of Duisburg-Essen) make a step towards opening a debate on “Increasing Vaccine Access in a Shorter Time. Alternative Regulatory Frameworks in Response to Pandemics.”

População do DF conta com 47 tipos de vacinas e soros — Source: Agência Brasília, https://www.flickr.com/photos/64586261@N02/51330020291/

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