Discussion: View Thread

28^th EGOS Colloquium, July 5-7, 2012

Aalto University and Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland

Sub-theme: Risks of Organizing and Organizing of Risks

Organizers:

Steve Maguire (Director, Marcel Desautels Institute for Integrated Management & Associate Professor of Strategy and Organization, Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University): steve.maguire@mcgill.ca

Nelson Phillips (Chair in Strategy & Organizational Behaviour, Imperial College London Business School): n.phillips@imperial.ac.uk

Dror Etzion (Assistant Professor of Strategy & Organization, Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University): dror.etzion@mcgill.ca

Are organizations, through their choices of technologies, products and processes, risky by design? How can organizations and institutions be designed to effectively assess, manage and govern risks? Papers in this stream will address these and related questions by focusing on the complex relationship between risk and organizing.

Risk and its management are increasingly prominent features of organizations and their environments. Outside the organization, risk discourse frames a long heterogeneous list of societal concerns in which organizations are implicated, including global pandemics; terrorism; food shortages; financial instability; chemical contamination; and climate change among others. Theorizing of risks by scientists not only fuels this process but has also given rise to a well developed discipline, "risk analysis", that has applied this body of knowledge to a remarkable diversity of social contexts. Consequently, a notable "turn to risk" (Mythen, 2008) is evident in sociology, economics, anthropology and political science as scholars seek to understand our contemporary "risk society" (Beck, 1992). Understanding the cultures (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982; Douglas, 1992) and systems of governmentality (Foucault, 1991) through which organizations operate requires scholarly engagement with risk.

With the emergence of our "risk society", organizations are not only seen as producers of risks borne by other actors, but they have also become bearers of regulatory, legal, and reputational risks as governments and other stakeholders increasingly target them in their efforts to manage the risks inherent in organizing. Indeed, inside the organization, the discourse of risk and its management has become a source of principles for organizing and managing in general, with important implications for how organizations are represented, managed and governed, as well as for how they respond to actors in their environment (Power, 2007). This has led to novel species of risk (e.g. operational, reputational); the rise of programmes such as Enterprise Risk Management; and new organizational roles such as the Chief Risk Officer. No longer the sole purview of those working in finance and insurance, issues of risk and its management increasingly inform managerial decision making in all sectors of the economy. In fact, "ideas about risk and risk management have come to play a key role in the very idea of organizing and organization itself" (Scheytt, Soin, Sahlin-Andersson & Power, 2006: 1336).

Despite these developments, risk remains "an important but under-investigated feature of organizations in Late Modernity" (Gephardt, Van Maanen & Oberlechner, 2009: 141). Papers in this stream will address this gap, exploring and illuminating the multiple connections between organizing and risk. We are interested in papers that examine any aspect of risk in and around organizations. As issues of risk often cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries, we welcome papers that draw on multiple perspectives, including organization theory, strategy, accounting, economics, and marketing. Specifically, we invite contributions that explore themes such as:

Risk and Organizational Environments: Industries, Institutions and Stakeholders

·         Institutional design for societal risk management

·         The role of risk in institutional change

·         The role of risk in technological and industrial evolution

·         Risk and involuntary stakeholders

·         Risk regulation and its consequences for organizations

·         Risk discourse and its consequences for organizations

Risk and Organizations: Organizing and Managing Risk

·         Organizational design for risk management, including risk metrics

·         Organizational processes of risk assessment and management

·         Risk and organizational sense-making; risk and decision-making

·         Risk, uncertainty and theories of organization-environment relations

·         Risk and stakeholder theory

·         Risk and theories of organizations and the natural environment

·         Risk and innovation; risk and technological design

Risk and Individuals: Enacting Risk

·         Risk and power relations

·         Risk and trust

·         Risk and identity

For further information about this stream including the submission process, please go to:

http://www.egos2012.net/2011/06/sub-theme-28-risks-of-organizing-and-organizing-of-risks-2/

The deadline for submissions is Monday, January 16, 2012!

To upload your short paper, please note:

(1) Log in to "MyEGOS" by using your member ID/email address and your password.

[If you have never been an EGOS member, you first of all need to become a registered user of the EGOS website. To do this, please go to the EGOS website, click on the "Join EGOS" link (grey "Member Area" box) and follow the instructions displayed for first time users.]

(2) Go to the left-hand navigation ("Main Menu"), click on "2012 EGOS Colloquium, Helsinki" and then on "Sub-themes": you will now see the list of all 57 sub-themes. Scroll down and select the sub-theme to which you wish to submit your short paper. Click on "Upload Short Paper". You will then be taken to another window in which you can enter the information about your short paper and upload your file.

(3) Please then follow the instructions explained given in the "Guidelines and criteria for the submission of short papers at EGOS Colloquia":

http://www.egosnet.org/jart/prj3/egosnet/data/uploads/28th%20EGOS%20Colloquium%202012/EGOS-Colloquia_Submission-of-short-papers.pdf

If you have further questions about the stream, please do not hesitate to contact the organizers (see email addresses above).

If you have further questions about uploading papers, please do not hesitate to contact Angelika Zierer (EGOS Executive Secretariat) at angelika@secretariat.egosnet.eu .