That’s Interesting! Award

Since the 29th EGOS Colloquium in Montréal in 2013, the annual That’s Interesting! Award is granted for papers that might not necessarily comply with standard paper formats, but advance a particularly challenging new idea.

This award is sponsored by Aalto University School of Economics (Helsinki, Finland), amounting to € 2,000.

The winning paper must cross intellectual boundaries, challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, attract the reader's attention and make an original argument. – The prize is awarded at the following EGOS Colloquium.


Please note:

  • Only full papers which have been uploaded via the EGOS submission system can be con­sidered for these awards!

  • When uploading the full paper via the EGOS website, author(s) should indicate whether she/he/they would like this paper to compete for this award.
     

That’s Interesting! Award 2023

Mark van Vuuren (University of Twente, The Netherlands) & Boris H.J.M. Brummans (University of Montréal, Canada)

Festina lente: Organizational patience as a future-making practice

SHORT LIST for the That’s Interesting! Award 2023

  • Chiara G. De Leo: Embroidering legitimacy: Exploring the interplay of materiality and visuality in times of turbulent institutional change
    [sub-theme 64: Qualitative Research with Archival Data]

  • José Luis Estévez, Davor Salihović & Stoyan V. Sgourev: Ad extorquendum veritatem: Denunciations at inquisitorial trial in the 14th century
    [sub-theme 07: Beyond Social Relations – Different Forms and Shapes of Networks]

  • Rajiv Maher & Simón Crisóstomo Loncopán: Repoliticizing spirituality: A collaborative autoethnography on decolonial identity formation in an environmental conflict
    [sub-theme 55: Organizing for Multiculturalism: Between Conflict and Inclusion]

  • Mark van Vuuren & Boris H.J.M. Brummans: Festina lente: Organizational patience as a future-making practice
    [sub-theme 06: Performing the Future Communicatively: How What Does Not Yet Exist Already Makes a Difference]
     

That’s Interesting! Award 2022

Bryan Spencer (City University of Hong Kong)

Decoupled earning among medical trainees and artificial intelligence

SHORT LIST for the That’s Interesting! Award 2022

  • Paolo Aversa, Alex Howard & Maria Makarova: The social attribution of innovation: Uncovering the heads behind the guillotine
    [sub-theme 05/2022: Valuation and Social Evaluations: Giving Value to Evaluations]

  •  Harsh Kumar Jha, Vinayak Ram Tripathi, Neha Arora & Ankita Singh: Partnership building in extreme situations: Professional calling, moral emotions and community engagement during big cat rescue operations in human settlemen
    [sub-theme 14/2022: The Role of Emotions and Embodiment in Extreme Contexts]

  • Bryan Spencer: Decoupled earning among medical trainees and artificial intelligence
    [sub-theme 44/2022: New Approaches to Organizing Collaborative Knowledge Creation]
     

That’s Interesting! Award 2021

Rohin Borpujari (London Business School, United Kingdom)
 
Open secrecy and social capital in technological innovation: Managing collective secrecy in the making of the atomic bomb

SHORT LIST for the That’s Interesting! Award 2021

  • Rohin Borpujari: Open secrecy and social capital in technological innovation: Managing collective secrecy in the making of the atomic bomb
    [sub-theme 33/2021: Historical Organization Studies in Action: Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Social Innovation]

  • Katharina Dittrich & Julius Kob: Financially redesigning the Anthropocene: The role of infrastructural work for climate risks and climate impact
    [sub-theme 30/2021: Financial Markets and Corporate Sustainability]

  • Tapiwa Seremani, Antonio Giuliani & Carine Farias: “This is a witch hunt!” Fostering and solidifying contentious online group cultures in the face of platform regulation and restriction
    [sub-theme 02/2021: New Actors, Responsibilities, and Forms of Organizing in the Age of Digital Transformations]
     

That’s Interesting! Award 2020

Michal Frenkel (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel) & Varda Wasserman (The Open University, Israel):

With God on their side: Gender–religiosity intersectionality and women’s workforce integration

SHORT LIST for the That’s Interesting! Award 2020

  • Katie Bailey: Spatial practices in waiting and delay at work
    [sub-theme 01/2020: Organization & Time: Understanding the Past (and Future) in the Present]

  • Michal Frenkel & Varda Wasserman: With God on their side: Gender–religiosity intersectionality and women’s workforce integration
    [sub-theme 28/2020: Inequality, Institutions, and Organizations]

  • Manuel F. Ramirez & Gazi Islam: “I am the Socratic Gadfly”: How sustainability managers construct climate change imaginaries through imaginary work
    [sub-theme 36/2020: Organizing for Climate Change: The Politics of Mitigation, Adaptation, and Suffering]
     

That’s Interesting! Award 2019

Kate Lockwood Harris (University of Minnesota, USA) & Karen Lee Ashcraft (University of Colorado-Boulder, USA):
Doing power, deferring difference: Gendered-raced processes and the case of Karen Barad

SHORT LIST for the That’s Interesting! Award 2019

  • Kate Lockwood Harris & Karen Lee Ashcraft: Doing power, deferring difference: Gendered-raced processes and the case of Karen Barad
    [sub-theme 10: Doing Process Research: Approaching Power as Productive and Relational in Organizing]

  • Arvind Karunakaran: Front-line professionals in the wake of social media scrutiny: A process model of obscured accountability in the digital age
    [sub-theme 08: Occupational Membership, Careers and Resources in Flux]

  • Rasmus Koss Hartman, Anders Dahl Krabbe & André Spicer: Veblenian entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial economy
    [sub-theme 49: Dreams, Fictions and Calculations: Imagined Futures in Organizational Life]
     

That’s Interesting! Award 2018

Adi Sapir (University of Haifa, Israel):

Mythologizing the Story of a Scientific Invention: Constructing the Legitimacy of Research Commercialization

SHORT LIST for the That's Interesting! Award 2018

  • Lukas Löhlein & David Twardowski: Lists, Accounting and the (Un)Making of the Organization: Understanding Shifting Modes of Formalization within Germany’s ‘Refugee Welcome Movement’
    [sub-theme 62: (Re-)Producing Civil Society through Organizational Practices]

  • R. Duncan M. Pelly: Sadism in Foreign Lands: The Burn Pit Atrocity
    [sub-theme 01: Ethnography: Surprises, Stories, Speaking Out]

  • Adi Sapir: Mythologizing the Story of a Scientific Invention: Constructing the Legitimacy of Research Commercialization
    [sub-theme 48: More to Talk About: Unexpected Roles of Language in Organizing]

     

That’s Interesting! Award 2017

Juliane Reinecke (University of Warwick, UK) & Shahzad (Shaz) Ansari (University of Cambridge, UK):

Targets as Allies or Adversaries: An Interactional Framing Perspective on the “Activist’s Dilemma”

SHORT LIST for the That's Interesting! Award 2017

  • Thijs Willems, Alfons van Marrewijk & Sierk Ybema: T.I.S. 3.1: The Management of Railroad Suicides
    [sub-theme 14: “De/Humanisation and Organization”]

  • Juliane Reinecke & Shahzad (Shaz) Ansari: Targets as Allies or Adversaries: An International Framing Perspective on the “Activist’s Dilemma”
    [sub-theme 25: “The Political Organization of Markets: Social Movements, Stakeholders and Non-market Strategy”]

  • Yousra Rahmouni Elidrissi: Bodies on the Line – Performing Embodied Politics in the French Climate Justice Movement
    [sub-theme 33: “Organizational Struggles over the Natural Environment”]

     

That’s Interesting! Award 2016

Daniel Geiger & Anja Danner-Schröder (University of Hamburg, Germany):

It’s All about Timing: Toward a Relational Understanding of Time in Routine Performance

SHORT LIST for the That's Interesting! Award 2016

  • Daniel Geiger & Anja Danner-Schröder: It’s all about Timing: Toward a Relational Understanding of Time in Routine Performance
    [sub-theme 03: “The Entrepreneurial Origins of Organizational Routines and their Impact on the Development of Organizations”]

  • Simon Oertel: Structure Determined by Imprinting: The Diffusion of Diversity Management in German Universities
    [sub-theme 53: “Power over Modern Universities”]

  • Hortense Blazsin: The Challenger Launch Decision, a Case Study of Organizational Deafness to Practical Wisdom
    [sub-theme 20: “Invisible/Silent Aspects of Change: The Role of Phronesis in Managing Organizational Change”]

     

That’s Interesting! Award 2015

Wafa Ben Khaled & Jean-Pascal Gond (Cass Business School, City University London, UK):

How do external regulations shape the design of ethical tools in organisations? An open polity and sociology of compliance perspective

in: Human Relations, first published online on March 28, 2019,
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0018726719828437

That’s Interesting! Award 2014

Russ Vince (School of Management, University of Bath, UK):

The Unconscious and Institutional Work

That’s Interesting! Award 2012

Kristianne Ervik (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway):

Deliberate Dyslexia as a De-signing Practice

Selection process, rules and time schedule

  • The selection committee for this award comprises members of the EGOS Board, editorial members of the Organization Studies Board and members of the local Colloquium organizing committee. The selection committee is chaired by an EGOS Board member.
  • After the EGOS Colloquium in July, the sub-theme convenors nominate not more than one paper submitted to their sub-theme via the EGOS website by August 31 that year. Sub-theme convenors can decide not to nominate a paper.
  • Sub-theme convenors cannot nominate papers that they co-author. Members of the selection committee, the local Colloquium organizing committee and the EGOS Board are excluded from competing for this award.
  • From September to December, the selection committee choose the winning paper from the nominated papers. The decision will be made in early Spring, but not be announced before the next EGOS Colloquium in July.
  • The prize is awarded at the next EGOS Colloquium in July.