Organization Science Winter Conference 2024
25th Anniversary
Organizing in the Age of Uncertainty:
Multiple Rationalities and Novel Possibilities
Call for Papers
February 29-March 2, 2024
Zurich (Switzerland)
Co-chairs
Stefano Brusoni (ETH Zurich)
Vibha Gaba (INSEAD)
John Joseph (University of California-Irvine)
Lamar Pierce (Washington University in St. Louis)
Violina Rindova (University of Southern California)
We are pleased to announce the 25th Organization Science Winter Conference (OSWC 2024), sponsored by Organization Science. The 2024 OSWC is the first in-person conference since the pandemic and is dedicated to advancing research about organizations and organizing in the age of uncertainty. Our fireside chat series will feature distinguished scholars such as Marya Besharov, Georg von Krogh, Dan Levinthal, William Ocasio, Robert Seamans, and Effy Vayena to explore our conference theme.
The conference theme intends to explore new directions in theoretical and empirical work that addresses the uncertainty of current environments created by major trends, including new technologies, political tensions, climate change, and growing economic disparities. These trends create pervasive uncertainty requiring people, organizations, and governments to rethink the future of work, well-being, inclusion, productivity, and sustainability.
At this year’s conference, we examine these trends and their impact on organizing amidst diverse interests, preferences, cognitions, and decisions driven by multiple forms of rationality. We seek to understand better how organizing in this dynamic landscape is conditioned by the plurality of identities, coalitions, goals, vocabularies, and logics and how these forces shape, for the organizations and their members, the possibilities they advance and the novel solutions to the complex problems of the world they pursue.
All this creates new demands on organizations and organizing and new challenges for organizational scholars. Fields as diverse as management, economics, sociology, marketing, political science, neurosciences, robotics, and AI are looking to offer new theories and new insights on the future of organizing. We invite papers and proposals that articulate forward-looking theoretical and empirical agendas for advancing organizational theory in the 21st century. A few illustrative but not exhaustive topics of interest include:
Cognition, Emotions, and Imagination. Decision making under uncertainty entails the interplay of different processes and skills. Whereas organizational research has historically strongly emphasized rationality understood from a cognitive perspective, research in various disciplines is bringing forward the role of emotions, imagination, and values. With the diffusion of new tools such as generative AI, these topics are more relevant than ever. These ideas suggest the importance of exploring multiple rationalities and developing a more complete picture of human –and artificial- rationality.
Attention, Memory, and Flexibility. Memory and attention have become central topics in the study of individual and organizational decision making. In the age of uncertainty, understanding the role of memory and attention as a source of both flexibility and constraint becomes increasingly important. How do individuals resolve these tensions and manage trade-offs? How do organizations manage the balance between the two? How does AI change the management of memory and attention by individuals and organizations?
Communication, Vocabularies, and Narratives. Organizational scholars have long emphasized the importance of reliable information, access to information, and information processing structures. In the age of uncertainty, sensemaking processes that weave together cognition, identity, narratives, and cultural code take center stage as individuals and organizations seek to navigate uncertainty and change. How do individuals and organizations manage greater heterogeneity in the resources brought to bear on communication, knowledge generation, and decision making? And how do new digital technologies impact our understanding of reliable information?
Multiple Goals, Values, and Ideologies. Organizational scholars have long viewed organizations as adaptive systems comprised of multiple actors with inconsistent preferences and identities. Under conditions of uncertainty, multiple goals, values, and ideologies could contribute to broader exploration and knowledge generation but may also compound uncertainty due to multiple goals, pluralistic values, and clashing ideologies. How do such tensions affect organizational design, identity, strategy, and performance? How do we deal with goals, values, and ideologies embedded in the technologies we use to make decisions?
Combining Human and Artificial Intelligence in Decision Making. Bounded rationality is a core principle of the behavioral theory of the firm. It is related to limits in cognition, time, and information when making decisions. While previous waves of digitalization might have helped human intelligence overcome information or attenuated constraints on information, recent developments in computer sciences and AI promise to attenuate the limits on time (as they decreasingly require direct human supervision or even participation to collect and analyze data) and cognition (as AI is approaching and indeed overtaking human cognition in several tasks). Is bounded rationality a legacy of the past in the age of AI? Or will it remain a central tenet of behavioral approaches to the firm and human decision making? What is the relationship between AI-assisted information processing and organizational decision making?
Submission and/or participation application
We aim to attract diverse scholars working on issues like the ones mentioned above. In the tradition of OSWC, we invite 3- to 5-page proposals for panel sessions and individual paper contributions. As has been the case in the past, much of the plenary program is created from proposals and suggestions received from scholars wishing to participate in OSWC. Most authors will be invited to join the highly acclaimed OSWC tradition---the open-ended, evening-long (6–9 pm) interactive poster sessions accompanied with finger food, wine, soft drinks, and desserts. Important: We can guarantee only one participant per paper/poster given the size of the venue. Requests for a second participant will be considered after the program is finalized.
If you are interested in attending OSWC2024 but not as a participant on the program, please submit a one-paragraph statement expressing your desire to participate and describing your interest in the topics addressed above. 50% of the OSWC participation slots are reserved for participants new to the conference (have not attended in the previous three years).
The application deadline for submissions is October 1, 2023. Submissions for paper presentations, panel proposals, and statements of interest for non-presenting participation should be submitted via this webpage: https://tinyurl.com/oswc2024 . Invitations to attend will be extended by the program committee by Mid November, 2023. If you have any questions, please contact the organizers at OSWC2024@gmail.com.
Doctoral Consortium on February 29 morning
The OSWC 2024 will launch the first OSWC Doctoral Consortium, open to doctoral students who may or may not participate in the main conference. Applicants who submit to both the OSWC Main Conference and the Doctoral consortium will have to pay the fees for the main conference. There is no additional fee for the Consortium. The Consortium will prioritize early to mid-stage doctoral students. The consortium will be run on the premises of ETH Zurich (Weinbergstrasse 56-58, F floor) on the morning of February 29, before the official opening of the OSWC 2024. Participants to the OSWC 2024 will not have to pay additional fees for the consortium. The consortium will include a maximum of 25 doctoral students, who will have the chance to discuss their work and engage in interactive sessions with colleagues, senior faculty, and journal editors.
Please submit proposals in the form of a 3-5 page summary of your dissertation by October 1 2023 via this webpage https://tinyurl.com/oswc2024-Doctoral-Consortium. Invitations to attend the doctoral consortium will be extended by the program committee by mid November, 2023. If you have any questions, please contact the organizers at OSWC2024@gmail.com
Further details can be found on the Organization Science Website:
http://connect.informs.org/orgsci/winter-meeting/home
Conference Registration
Participants will have to register by December 15, 2023 (early birds) or January 15, 2024 (regular deadline). Fees will be available soon through the website above.
Hotel Accommodations
The main conference will be hosted in the facilities of the Zurich Development Centre (ZDC, Zurich Insurance) https://www.zurichdevelopmentcenter.com/ These facilities are located in the vicinity of ETH Zurich (where the doctoral workshop will happen), offer accommodations in single rooms for up to 80 people. The ZDC can be easily reached from downtown Zurich by public transport. Additional details on booking accommodations will be communicated closer to the event, on the website above.