{"id":502,"date":"2019-10-04T23:13:57","date_gmt":"2019-10-04T21:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hsu-hh.de\/orgasoz\/?p=502"},"modified":"2019-10-04T23:15:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-04T21:15:00","slug":"cfp-egos-2020-tackling-societal-grand-challenges-through-unconventional-forms-of-organization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hsu-hh.de\/orgasoz\/cfp-egos-2020-tackling-societal-grand-challenges-through-unconventional-forms-of-organization","title":{"rendered":"CfP EGOS 2020 „Tackling Societal Grand Challenges through Unconventional Forms of Organization“"},"content":{"rendered":"

Call for Papers<\/strong><\/p>\n

EGOS 2020 in Hamburg, July 2\u20134 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sub-theme 55: Tackling Societal Grand Challenges through Unconventional Forms of Organization<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Deadline for submission of short papers is Monday, January 14, 2019, 23:59 CET.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Convenors:
\n<\/strong>H\u00e9lo\u00efse Berkowitz
\n<\/b>CNRS, Toulouse School of Management, France
\nheloise.berkowitz@tsm-education.fr<\/p>\n

Michael Grothe-Hammer
\n<\/b>Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg, Germany, & Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
\nmichael.grothe-hammer@hsu-hh.de<\/p>\n

Annachiara Longoni
\n<\/b>ESADE Business School, Spain
\nannachiara.longoni@esade.edu<\/p>\n

Our society faces multiple global challenges such as climate change, digital workforce, algorithmization, datafication, exploitive labor, extreme poverty, gender inequality, mass migration, aging populations, or increasing disaster risks. Scholars have named such problems \u201cgrand challenges\u201d, i.e. \u201cspecific critical barrier(s) that, if removed, would help solve an important societal problem with a high likelihood of global impact through widespread implementation\u201d (George et al., 2016: 1881). Grand challenges are characterized by wide constellations of interrelated systems and stakeholders, either directly involved or indirectly affected. This deep interconnectedness makes it increasingly difficult to forecast grand challenges\u2019 future developments (Ferraro et al., 2015). Therefore, grand challenges confront society with enormous complexities and uncertainties that call for more adaptive collective action forms to provide solutions.<\/p>\n

Organizations are related to grand challenges in two crucial respects. First, organizat ions are more often than not directly affected by those challenges and have to cope with them (Vaara & Durand, 2012). For instance, organizations have to deal with natural disasters, manage migration, and implement digital transformations. Second, organizations are fundamental when it comes to tackling grand challenges (Ferraro et al., 2015). Due to their unmatched capabilit ies, organizations can fight poverty and gender inequality, shape digital changes, and ensure decent work environments (cf. Ahrne et al., 2016; Apelt et al., 2017). Therefore, it comes as no surprise that grand challenges are an issue of growing importance in organization studies.<\/p>\n

Scholars have, for example, investigated organizational responses to issues like climate change (Chaudhury et al., 2016; Schneider et al., 2017; Sch\u00fcssler et al., 2014), underwater noise pollution and sustainable innovation (Berkowitz, 2018), societal effects of \u201cdatification\u201d (Newell & Marabelli, 2015), disaster risk (Grothe-Hammer & Berthod, 2017), sustainability of supply chain (Acquier et al., 2015; Longoni et al., 2014), extreme poverty (Besio & Meyer, 2015), aging societies (Schirmer & Michailakis, 2016), refugee crises (Kornberger et al., 2017), or digital and exploitative labor (Bartley, 2007; Bauer & Gegenhuber, 2015). Given their complexities and wide-reaching effects, grand challenges thereby often evade well-establis hed organizational forms such as conventional bureaucracies. Instead, grand challenges seem to both spawn and require rather fluid and unconventional forms of organization (Br\u00e8s et al., 2018; Schrey\u00f6gg & Sydow, 2010).<\/p>\n

In this respect, we identify at least three possibilities of how unconventional forms of organization relate to societal grand challenges:<\/p>\n