One week left to register for our AOM 2025 PDW Interdisciplinary Approaches to Tackling Grand Challenges: Reflections on Dilemmas and Positionings.
Saturday, July 26, 2025
12:30–3:30 PM CEST
Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Kilen (Ks43), Frederiksberg (near center Copenhagen)
Afterwards a drinks and snacks for participants from 2:30–3:30 PM in the Mezzanine
Session: 21656
We invite early-career scholars and interdisciplinary researchers to join our Professional Development Workshop (PDW) at AOM 2025 in Copenhagen. This session focuses on the dilemmas, tensions, and strategic choices researchers face when tackling complex societal issues-such as inequality, climate change, and technological transformation-through interdisciplinary and impact-driven research.
Held in memory of Prof. Dr. Issy Drori, this PDW honors his influential work that emphasized the value of interdisciplinary inquiry and societal engagement within organization studies and entrepreneurship.
Key themes include:
-
Making grand challenges researchable: How can we move from the high-level, abstract, or sometimes vague broad scope of "grand challenges" to clear, actionable, and theoretically grounded research questions?
-
Bridging diverse methodologies and theories: How do we rigorously combine tools and lenses from multiple epistemologies, disciplines, and methods when studying complex societal problems?
-
Collaborating with societal partners: How do we build meaningful, ethical, and effective collaborations with practitioners and non-academic stakeholders?
-
Balancing academic rigor with practical relevance: How can we as researchers design studies that meet high academic standards while also offering real-world impact? How do we deal with the pragmatic and normative tension between publishing in top journals and producing knowledge that matters in practice?
-
Researcher positioning: insider vs. outsider approaches: Should we as researchers aim for detached observation or active participation and an activist role? How does one's positioning affect the research?
The workshop will include small-group roundtable discussions and conclude with a networking reception (drinks and snacks provided).
Expert facilitators:
Gili Drori, Dovev Lavie, Gideon Markman, Kerstin Neumann, Roy Suddaby, Eero Vaara and Marieke van Wieringen.
Organizers:
Tijs van den Broek, Yiannis Kyratsis, Sierk Ybema, Ronny Manos and Fiza Ahmed.
More information is available here: 2025 AOM 85th Annual Meeting
Registration deadline: June 30, 2025
Register here
We look forward to thoughtful dialogue and new connections!
------------------------------
Tijs Van Den Broek
Assistant Professor
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Amsterdam
------------------------------