Discussion: View Thread

  • 1.  EGOS 2017 Sub-theme "Projects, Organizations and Institutions"

    Posted 10-16-2016 06:10

    EGOS 2017 at CBS - Call for Short Papers
    Sub-theme 58: Projects, Organizations and Institutions

    Jörg Sydow

    Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

    Candace Jones

    University of Edinburgh Business School, United Kingdom

    Jonas Söderlund

    BI Norway & Linköping University, Sweden

     

    Deadline: January 9, 2017, 23:59:59 CET, for further information please visit:

    http://www.egosnet.org/jart/prj3/egos/main.jart?rel=de&content-id=1442567999321&reserve-mode=active

           Projects – like other forms of temporary organizations – are characterized by intentionally finite time frames that enable firms and other individual or corporate actors to organize in a flexible and ad-hoc manner (Sydow et al., 2004; Jones & Lichtenstein, 2008; Kenis et al., 2009; Bakker et al., 2016). Despite increased research interest by organization theorists (Bakker, 2010), our progress toward understanding the embeddedness of projects into organizational or wider institutional contexts is still limited. Frequently, projects are viewed as separated islands with little interaction with their environment. This still is a major weakness of current theorizing. Today, we find projects in a wide range of settings that are implemented in strongly institutionalized settings with regulatory frameworks and professional norms such as construction projects with distinct state regulatory codes for buildings and professionals, as well as collaboration among diverse professions with varying professional norms. The institutionalized setting both facilitates and hinders the progress of the project. Highlighting the intersection between projects and institutions is particularly important given the role projects play in creating cross-organizational and cross-institutional collaboration.
     
    Projects are usually organized and run by formal organizations. No matter whether these are project-supported or project-based (Hobday, 2000; Lundin et al., 2015), the temporary system is not only embedded in the respective permanent organization and networks but also in wider institutional fields. In face of the importance of project activity some of these fields may even amount to project ecologies (Grabher, 2002). But which institutional fields influence single projects, project portfolios or project networks – and how? In turn, there are institutional projects which help to address either the stabilization or change of the institutional environment. As such, they can be considered as being vehicles for institutional entrepreneurship or arenas for institutional work (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). But how exactly are projects used in these processes – and what determines their success?
     
    Because of the relatedness of projects and institutions, institutional theory may be an appropriate lens to study projects inside and outside organizations. So far, limited use has been made of this theory that has come to dominate organization studies (e.g. Dille & Söderlund, 2011; Scott et al., 2011). What is the value of institutional analyses of projects as the most popular form of temporary organizing? How do they capture the influence of institutions on projects and of projects on institutions? And how might projects influence institutions as carriers that diffuse norms, standards and practices across project participants? What other theories might be needed to improve our understanding of the relationship between projects, organizations, and institutions?
     
    References

      Bakker, R.M. (2010): "Taking stock of temporary organizational forms: A systematic review and research agenda." International Journal of Management Reviews, 12 (4), 466–486.

      Bakker, R.M., DeFillippi, R., Schwab, A., & Sydow, J. (2016): "Temporary organizing: Promises, processes, problems." Organization Studies, 37 (12), DOI: 10.1177/0170840616655982

      Dille, T., & Söderlund, J. (2011): "Managing inter-institutional projects: The significance of isochronism, timing norms and temporal misfits." International Journal of Project Management, 29 (4), 480–490.

      Grabher, G. (2002): "The project ecology of advertising: Tasks, talent and teams." Regional Studies, 36 (3), 245–262.

      Hobday, M. (2000): "The project-based organisation: an ideal form for managing complex products and systems?" Research Policy, 29 (7–8), 871–893.

      Jones, C., & Lichtenstein, B. (2008): "Temporary inter-organizational projects: How temporal and social embeddedness enhance coordination and manage uncertainty." In: S. Cropper, M. Ebers, C. Huxham & P. Smith Ring (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Inter-Organizational Relations. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 231–255.

      Kenis, P., Janowicz-Panjaitan, M., & Cambré, B. (eds.) (2009): Temporary Organzations – Prevalence, Logic and Effectiveness. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

      Lawrence, T.B., & Suddaby, R. (2006): "Institutions and institutional work." In: S.R. Clegg, C. Hardy, T.B. Lawrence & W.R. Nord (eds.): The SAGE Handbook of Organization Studies. London: SAGE Publications, 215–254.

      Lundin, R., Arvidsson, N., Brady, T., Eksted, E., Midler, C., & Sydow, J. (2015): Managing and Working in Project Society – Institutional Challenges of Temporary Organizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

      Scott, R.W., Levitt, R.E., & Orr, R.J. (eds.) (2001): Global Projects – Institutional and Political Challenges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

     Sydow, J., Lindkvist, L., & DeFillippi, R.J. (2004): "Project-based organizations, embeddedness and repositories of knowledge: Editorial." Organization Studies, 25 (9), 1475–1489.

    ************************************** This message is from ENTREP which is sponsored by the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management. Please do not post messages with attached files. Commercial messages or spammed messages are not allowed on the list. The use of auto-responder "out-of-office" messages may also lead to your removal from the list. You can manage your subscription options, including joining or leaving the list here: http://aomlists.pace.edu/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=entrep&A=1 If you have questions or need help, please contact Jeff Pollack (jeff_pollack@ncsu.edu) or Kevin Cox (kcox24@my.fau.edu). Ventures HO!


  • 2.  AMJ Special Research Forum: "New Ways of Seeing" , for Dec 2017

    Posted 10-17-2016 02:37

    Dear Colleagues,

     

    please find attached a brand-new Call for Papers for a Special Research Forum of the Academy of Management Journal: "New Ways of Seeing". The details are pasted below. I do hope you consider submitting your best work.

     

    Best wishes,

    Marc Gruber
    ____________________________________________________

    Prof. Dr. Marc Gruber
    Chair of Entrepreneurship & Technology Commercialization 

    Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
    entc.epfl.ch


    ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

     

    CALL FOR PAPERS:

    SPECIAL RESEARCH FORUM

     

    NEW WAYS OF SEEING:

    Using Novel Theory and Meaningful Cross-disciplinary Collaborations to Advance Management Research

     

    Jason D. Shaw (Incoming Editor)

    Pratima (Tima) Bansal and Marc Gruber (Incoming Deputy Editors)

     

    This Special Research Forum (SRF) encourages "new ways of seeing." This theme challenges our community of researchers, and beyond, to consider fresh, novel, and different theoretical positions, assumptions, and frameworks for their topics of interest. In addition, new ways of seeing provides an impetus to engage in meaningful, ground-breaking partnerships with researchers in other disciplines-using, building, or extending conceptual frameworks, research designs, and analytic techniques rooted in disciplines outside of the management domain to advance our understanding of management issues.

     

    We frequently attempt to tackle new problems or study new phenomena, but the theories and frameworks we use are often grounded in thinking from decades ago; the designs we adopt are those bounded by our areas of interest; and the analytic approaches are the latest incremental improvements on our past gold standards. By applying the same theories, logics, and assumptions, we risk "looking for our keys under the lamp post."

     

    This SRF invites manuscripts that focus on new ways of seeing organizational issues. This SRF focuses on theory-the development, extension, or adoption of new frameworks, perspectives, and lenses applied to management and organizational issues. We encourage authors to consider new, alternative frameworks for addressing management topics rather than reformulating commonly used approaches. In line with AMJ's mission, the call is broad and open to all topics, levels of analysis, and research designs. Submitters should articulate how their manuscript offers a contribution consistent with "new ways of seeing." We hope that this call for new and alternative theory will also spur endeavors that incorporate outcomes beyond those commonly observed in our literature (e.g., short-term, performance-related outcomes). Some examples of broad, interrelated areas below that may be good candidates for new ways of seeing are identified below.

     

    • Sustainable development. Sustainable development "meets the needs of present generations without compromising the needs for future generations." (WCED, 1987). The notion implies new ways of conceptualizing the purpose and outcomes of organizations, but current approaches to research in this area often apply existing theories and methods to sustainability-related topics (e.g., climate change, biodiversity, poverty). Advancing our knowledge of these issues requires theorizing beyond common performance-related outcomes, to other issues that will ensure the livelihood of future generations, including carbon cycles, supply chains, energy use, and consumption patterns.

     

    • Pay disparities and other forms of inequality. Current approaches to the study of these issues are mired in decades-old debates about tradeoffs between effort or motivation and fairness. The extant literature cannot yet disentangle the limits, forms, and conditions under which these differences play out in organizations, forms and facets of disparities and inequalities that hold the most influence on outcomes, and the points at which inequalities become inequitable. Existing studies tend to focus on rather narrow forms of disparities and an even more limited set of outcomes, typically performance. New ways of seeing disparities may include developing or bringing to bear theories of power, status, public policy, culture, and governance.

     

    • Individual and organizational well-being. Current approaches seem linked inextricably to long-standing theories of stress, health, and vitality, focused on global perceptions of wellness, or rooted in an organizational interventionist approach. New ways of seeing well-being could include the development or adoption of perspectives outside of management, occupational psychology, and the like, and might include theory and insights from biology, life sciences, engineering, or other unique perspectives.

     

    These categories are simply example areas where new ways of seeing are needed. Many other possibilities and topics would also be good fits for this SRF. The boundaries of the SRF are not dictated by the theoretical or empirical approach, but by adopting or developing unique theoretical lenses that will result in major leaps forward in our understanding. Although we encourage novelty in theorizing and methods, we will uphold Academy of Management Journal standards of logical and empirical rigor.

     

    TIMELINE AND SUBMISSION

     

    Submissions must be submitted between December 1 and December 31, 2017. Contributors should follow the directions for manuscript submission described in "Information for Contributors" in the front of each issue of AMJ and on AMJ's Contributor Information Page. For queries about submission, contact AMJ's Managing Editor, Michael Malgrande, at mmalgrande@aom.org.

    ************************************** This message is from ENTREP which is sponsored by the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management. Please do not post messages with attached files. Commercial messages or spammed messages are not allowed on the list. The use of auto-responder "out-of-office" messages may also lead to your removal from the list. You can manage your subscription options, including joining or leaving the list here: http://aomlists.pace.edu/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=entrep&A=1 If you have questions or need help, please contact Jeff Pollack (jeff_pollack@ncsu.edu) or Kevin Cox (kcox24@my.fau.edu). Ventures HO!