Call for Papers

The title of the forthcoming 40th EGOS Colloquium in Milan is the fascinating theme of “Crossroads for Organizations: Time, Space, and People”. To this end, the hybrid format (both online and offline) sub-theme sets out to explore the epistemic aspects of this broader, overarching narrative, while focusing on the nature of organizational knowledge and judgment. In particular, organizational knowledge and judgment warrant urgent and critical attention for researchers since global and technological changes affect the constitution and flow of knowledge and shape how people make judgements in organizational contexts (Frey, 2019). The emergence of AI and interactive technologies (Daveport and Miller, 2022; Lebovitz et al., 2022), new ways of working and communicating (de Vaujany et al., 2021), the overflow of information (Tsoukas, 1997) and the resulting need to manage attention (Nicolini and Korica, 2021), coupled by the mutual interdependencies of communities, organizations, and societies in the context of grand challenges (Ferraro et al., 2015), leads to significant implications for knowledge and the ability to make good judgments (Chia and Holt, 2006; Holt, 2018).
 
It is then clear that the texture of organizational knowledge and the capacity of organizational members to judge complex situations in-situ is changing. In parallel, drawing on organizational knowledge does not automatically guarantee a wise judgment. This means that organizational knowledge and judgment may have to be re-discovered while subject to stresses, tensions, and paradoxes that affect the rhythms of everyday life in organizations (Smith and Lewis, 2011, 2022). For this reason, the sub-theme’s ambition is to encourage scholarly inquiry into the nature of organizational knowledge and judgment and thereby investigate the epistemic aspects of ‘Crossroads for Organizations’ in which knowledge emerges at new intersections and interplay of time, space, and people.
 
While Easterby-Smith and Lyles (2005) define organizational knowledge as “(…) the nature of knowledge that is contained within organizations”, Blacker (1995) notes that different authors assume distinct epistemological assumptions about the nature and purpose of organizational knowledge. Specifically, some authors picture organizational knowledge as a flow of information (Brown and Duguid, 2002) stock of expertise (Starbuck, 1992), or a strategic resource that can and should be measured to ensure good strategic performance (King and Zeithaml, 2003). Meanwhile, other authors regard organizational knowledge as an activity or a process – i.e. individuals’ socially developed competencies and their ability to use the existing formal representations and processes in organizational context (Patriotta, 2003; Pentland, 1992). Seen this way, organizational knowledge is a distributed system where there is no central point of control due to the emergent nature of knowledge, which is cultivated in self-governed practices, while “portions of it are known differentially to all” (Tsoukas, 1996). Thus, organizational knowledge is continuously enacted (Orlikowski, 2002) and is a ‘two-way street’ between the official institutions and the more informal landscapes of social practices, i.e. distinct ‘forms of knowledge and forms of life’ (Tsoukas, 2005).
 
The debates on organizational knowledge are closely related to the consideration of judgment in organizations, especially since, for organizational members to exercise their judgment, they need to draw on organizational knowledge. However, even in the field of judgment research, the debates are subject to different approaches. Some scholars adopt a cognitive-cum-deliberative approach wherein judgment entails the conscious evaluation of options (Bitektine, 2011; Priem et al., 2010; Young et al., 2013). Other scholars adopt a wisdom approach, wherein agents manifest the intuitive ability to sense the complex situations ‘as a whole’ and be able to choose the ‘right’ course of action (Contu, 2022; Shotter and Tsoukas, 2014a, 2014b). Therefore, in light of a globalized and complex world, organizational knowledge and judgment can be expected to play an important role in adapting to the circumstances and even ‘bouncing forward’ by improving through learning and change (Jarzabkowski et al., 2019; Taleb, 2013).

Consequently, this sub-theme suggests, but is not limited to, the following broad questions:

• How can we advance the existing debates on the nature and characteristics of organizational knowledge and/or judgment, in light of the increased complexity of problems organizations grapple with in a globalized world?

• How do new technologies, including but not limited to AI, VR, and machine learning, impact on organizational knowledge and/or judgment in contemporary organizations?

• How do time and space, especially when mediated by technology, enable or inhibt the development of organizational knowledge and the exercise of judgment?

• How can organizational knowledge and judgment be integrated together conceptually in new ways?

• How is morality intertwined with the processes of drawing on organizational knowledge and utilizing judgment?

References

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• Blackler F (1995) Knowledge, Knowledge Work and Organizations: An Overview and Interpretation. Organization Studies 16(6): 1021–1046.
• Brown JS and Duguid P (2002) Social Life of Information. Boston, MA, USA: Harvard Business Press.
• Chia R and Holt R (2006) Strategy as Practical Coping: A Heideggerian Perspective. Organization Studies 27(5): 635–655.
• Contu A (2022) Antigone: On Phronesis And How To Make Good and Timely Leadership Decisions. Academy of Management Review 48(1): 149-164.
• Daveport TH and Miller SM (2022) Working with AI: Real Stories of Human-Machine Collaboration. Boston, MA, USA: MIT Press.
• de Vaujany F-X, Leclercq-Vandelannoitte A, Munro I, et al. (2021) Control and Surveillance in Work Practice: Cultivating Paradox in ‘New’ Modes of Organizing. Organization Studies 42(5): 675–695.
• Easterby-Smith M and Lyles MA (2005) Introduction: Watersheds of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management. In: Easterby-Smith M and Lyles MA (eds) The Blackwell Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.
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• Tsoukas H (2005) Forms of Knowledge and Forms of Life in Organized Contexts. In: Complex Knowledge: Studies in Organizational Epistemology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Young MJ, Morris MW and Scherwin VM (2013) Managerial Mystique : Magical Thinking in Judgments of Managers ’ Vision , Charisma , and Magnetism. 39(4): 1044–1061.
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