CfP: New forms of organization in times of uncertainty

NEON-dagene 2023

November 21-23, 2023

Trondheim, Norway

 

Deadline for submission of abstracts (max 500 words) is August 31, 2023.

More information under: https://www.neondagene.no/call-for-papers-2023/

Track organizers

Charlie F. Thompson Organization and Society Research Group Department of Sociology and Political Science Norwegian University of Science and Technology charlie.f.thompson@ntnu.no

 

Michael Grothe-Hammer Organization and Society Research Group Department of Sociology and Political Science Norwegian University of Science and Technology michael.grothe-hammer@ntnu.no

Grand challenges and matters of turbulence, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, wars, and corresponding large-scale migrations (e.g. 2015 refugee crisis) are increasingly recurrent issues that test the resilience and robustness of both public governance systems and society. The complexity and variety of society’s challenges appears to have grown immensely in the past decades, as has the complexity of modern society as such. This increase in complexities has been paralleled by an unsolicited increase in both the number of organizations around the globe and the different forms that organization can take. In the past years, scholars in sociology, public administration, and management studies, have come up with a broad variety of new terms defining particular forms of organization. These include hybrid organizations, network organizations, organizations without actorhood, meta-organizations, temporary organizations, and partial organization. These forms of organization often have in common that they represent or entail interorganizational relations, where existing organizations create new organizations and/or collaborative structures. However, these forms of existing organizations diverge in layers of formalization, specialization, purpose, temporality, and structure. Moreover, concepts such as co-creation and social innovation are buzzwords that aim to describe new forms of participation in political processes with the aim to involve new societal groups in local, central or international level of governance – but also to respond to changing landscapes of society. In this panel we seek to unravel the nexus of new forms of organization and its impact on society in times of uncertainty. The panel features a broad understanding of organization and society. We invite both conceptual papers that discuss the relationship between new forms of organization and empirical contributions (both interpretive, case- and variable-based approaches) that explore real-world cases at different governance or societal settings.

 

Topics of interest are:

• new forms of organization unconventional forms of organization

• new theories of organization

• interorganizational relations

• networks

• hybrid organization

• network governance

• governance networks

• meta-organization

• partial organization

 

Selected References

Ahrne, G., & Brunsson, N. (2008). Meta-organizations. Edward Elgar. 

Ahrne, G. & N. Brunsson (2019) Organization Outside Organizations: The Abundance of Partial Organization in Social Life. Cambridge University Press. 

Ansell, C. & J. Trondal (2018) Governing turbulence: An organizational-institutional agenda. Perspectives on Public Management and Governance. 1(1), p. 43–57. Bakker, R. M., DeFillippi, R. J., Schwab, A. & J. Sydow (2016) Temporary organizing: Promises, processes, problems. Organization Studies. 37(12), p. 1703-1719. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840616655982 

Barley, S. R. (2016). 60th Anniversary Essay: Ruminations on How We Became a Mystery House and How We Might Get Out. ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCE QUARTERLY, 61(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839215624886 

Battilana, J., & Dorado, S. (2010). Building Sustainable Hybrid Organizations: The Case of Commercial Microfinance Organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 53(6), 1419–1440. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.57318391 

Berkowitz, H., Brunsson, N., Grothe-Hammer, M., Sundberg, M. & B. Valiorgue (2022) Meta-Organizations: A Clarification and a Way Forward. M@n@gement, 25(2), p. 1-9. https://doi.org/10.37725/mgmt.v25.8728 

Bres, L., Raufflet, E., & Boghossian, J. (2018). Pluralism in Organizations: Learning from Unconventional Forms of Organizations. International Journal of Management Reviews, 20(2), 364–386. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12136 

Bromley, P., & Meyer, J. W. (2015). Hyper-organization: Global organizational expansion. Oxford University Press. 

Brunsson, N., Gustafsson Nordin, I., & Tamm Hallström, K. (2022). ‘Un-responsible’ Organization: How More Organization Produces Less Responsibility. Organization Theory, 3(4), 26317877221131584. https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877221131582 

Ferraro, F., Etzion, D., & Gehman, J. (2015). Tackling Grand Challenges Pragmatically: Robust Action Revisited. ORGANIZATION STUDIES, 36(3), 363–390. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840614563742 

George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. (2016). Understanding and Tackling Societal Grand Challenges through Management Research. Academy of Management Journal, 59(6), 1880–1895. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2016.4007 

Grothe-Hammer, M. (2019). Organization without actorhood: Exploring a neglected phenomenon. European Management Journal, 37(3), 325–338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2018.07.009 

Grothe-Hammer, M., Berkowitz, H., & Berthod, O. (2022). Decisional Organization Theory: Towards an Integrated Framework of Organization. In M. Godwyn (Ed.), Research Handbook on the Sociology of Organizations (pp. 30–53). Edward Elgar. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839103261.00011 

Gümüsay, A. A., Marti, E., Trittin-Ulbrich, H., & Wickert, C. (2022). How Organizing Matters for Societal Grand Challenges. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 79, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20220000079002 

Klijn, E-H. & J. Koppenjan (2016) Governance Networks in the Public Sector. Routledge. Luhmann, N. (2012). Theory of society: Volume 1. Stanford University Press. Luhmann, N. (2013). Theory of Society: Volume 2. Stanford University Press. 

McMullen, J. S. & B. J. Warnick (2015) Should We Require Every New Venture to Be a Hybrid Organization? Journal of Management Studies, 53(4), p. 630-662. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12150

 

C o n t a c t


Michael Grothe-Hammer

michael.grothe-hammer@ntnu.no