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Organization Science Winter Conference 2018

Technology and the Modern Organization

Call for Papers

March 1-3, 2017

Park City, Utah, USA

Co-chairs

Gautam Ahuja, Cornell University

Linda Argote, Carnegie Mellon University

Gino Cattani, New York University

PuayKhoon Toh, University of Texas at Austin

Anita Woolley, Carnegie Mellon University

In many different and far-reaching ways technology is shaping the modern organization. From organizational boundaries to employment relationships to individual's identification with organizations, almost every aspect of organizational life is being impacted by technology. In the deep tradition of Organization Science, this conference hopes to bring together scholars from a variety of persuasions, e.g., micro, macro, strategy to examine the many facets and implications of how organization structures, systems, practices and cultures are shaping technology and how technology is shaping organizational structures, systems, practices and cultures.  Illustrative but not exhaustive topics of interest to the conference include

Organizational boundaries and technology

How is technology affecting firm boundaries? How does technology change the costs of transacting across boundaries?  What new organizational designs are afforded by new technologies?   How are firm boundaries affecting the quantum and direction of technical change?

Technology and human interaction in organizations

How is technology affecting the nature of the employment relationship? How are changes in employment relationships made possible by technology (e.g., Uber, the gig economy) influencing a wide variety of outcomes such as organizational structures, organizational learning and development, employee motivation, and the organizational identification of employees?

In what different ways and with what consequences is technology supplementing or complementing human effort n organizations?  How is it influencing job design, location, employee retention, employee turnover and what are the theoretical and organizational consequences?

How do managers' decision-making processes and biases affect the adoption of technologies? How does hierarchy affect technology, and how does technology in turn influence organizational form? How do managers and employees respond to technological changes and what are the implications of their responses? How does technologically-enabled monitoring influence employees' attitudes, behaviors and performance?

Technology and organizational strategy

Technology is making possible a variety of different business models or strategies, enabling firms to create and capture values in new ways. What generalizable implications does this have for our established theories of super-normal performance? 

How do new technologies affect the development of organizational capabilities?

Technology and organizational research methods

 In what ways is technology enabling us to measure organizational phenomena and establish causal inference  in organizational relationships? Papers that provide powerful and path-breaking applications of the use of technology- enabled approaches, such as machine learning, big-data analysis, web-scraping, etc. or that use technology to construct field experiments or devise quasi-experimental hypothesis testing are particularly welcomed.

We invite 3- to 5-page proposals for plenary panels and interactive poster papers on the theme of the conference. 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 final.

If you are interested in attending OSWC24 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.

December 5, 2017 is the deadline for proposals or individual applications to attend.

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 another highly acclaimed OSWC tradition---the open-ended, evening-long (7–10pm) Interactive Poster Sessions. 50% of the OSWC participation slots are reserved for participants new to the conference (have not attended in the previous three years). Invitations to attend will be extended by the program committee for OSWC24 by January 8, 2018.

Submission and/or Participation Application

Further details on registration and hotels will be coming soon to the Organization Science Website: http://pubsonline.informs.org/journal/orsc 

Rgds

PK Toh

Associate Professor

Management

McCombs School of Business

University of Texas at Austin