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Sub-theme 53: Responsible Management-as-Practice in More-than-Human Organizations: Organizational Responsibility in the More-than-Human Assemblage

Convenors:
Frederik Claeyé
ICHEC Brussels Management School & Nelson Mandela University, Belgium/South Africa
Marcelo de Souza Bispo
Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), Brazil
Charlotte Durieux
ICHEC Brussels Management School, Belgium

Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Contemporary organizations operate in an increasingly complex web of relationships with more-than-human actors, from artificial intelligence systems to ecological entities (de Vaujany et al., 2024; Gherardi & Laasch, 2022). These relationships demand not only new ways of conceptualizing responsible management but also a reframing of existing theories, models, and methods to better equip organizations for addressing the grand challenges (Choquet & Claeyé, 2024; de Souza Bispo, 2022, 2024, 2025; Durieux, 2024).
 
Organizations are increasingly hybrid collectives co-produced by diverse agencies, including human entrepreneurs, discourses, fantasies, algorithmic systems, ecological constraints, and technological infrastructures (Glaser et al., 2024; Resch et al., 2021). This sub-theme investigates managerial practices, organizational tensions, and paradoxes related to grand challenges, including concepts such as growth, de-growth, and profits and how the notion of responsibility plays in these contexts.
 
Practice theories, particularly posthumanist practice theories, offer valuable insights for understanding organizing in more-than-human contexts, as they naturally attend to the material, technological, and ecological dimensions of organizational life (Gherardi & Laasch, 2022). By focusing on the “doings” rather than just the “sayings”, practice approaches reveal how responsibility emerges through the everyday entanglements of human and non-human actors. Responsible Management-as-Practice (RMAP) emphasizes the situated, relational, and sociomaterial aspects of management, where responsibility is enacted through interactions among human and more-than-human actors (Laasch et al., 2023). RMAP moves beyond abstract principles, focusing instead on how organizational responsibility is “done” in practice, highlighting the entanglements of materiality, tools, and discourses in shaping organizational behaviour (Gond & Brès, 2020; Leonardi & Treem, 2020). As such, responsibility is no longer a linear, anthropocentric process but a distributed achievement emerging through intricate sociomaterial interactions.
 
Building on the above, we invite contributions that critically explore organizational responsibility as a more-than-human phenomenon. Our sub-theme seeks to illuminate how responsible management practices emerge through complex interactions between human and non-human actors, challenging traditional linear organizational development models based on economic growth (Carruthers, 2023) and maximizing profits (de Souza Bispo, 2024). We seek contributions that move beyond traditional boundaries, revealing how organizational growth/profit is continuously negotiated through intricate, often unpredictable interactions between human and more-than-human entities, provoking new ways of understanding and acting responsibly.
 
We are particularly interested in theoretical, methodological, and empirical work that:

  • problematizes the notion of responsibility in organizational and management contexts and practices;

  • addresses the paradoxes involving grand challenges and economic growth/profitability;

  • develops innovative conceptualizations of organizational responsibility beyond anthropocentric perspectives;

  • interrogates how growth/profitability emerges through hybrid assemblages of human entrepreneurs, technological systems, ecological constraints, and algorithmic infrastructures;

  • explores how non-human actors actively shape organizational transformation in the face of grand challenges.

 
Key questions include, but are not limited to:

  • How do technologies, algorithms, and ecological systems co-produce organizational responsibility?

  • What ethical complexities arise when responsibility is understood as a distributed, collective achievement?

  • How do responsible management practices negotiate tensions between economic growth and grand challenges?

  • How do ecological systems and technological infrastructures influence what is considered responsible management?

  • How can RMAP help organizations navigate their relationship with artificial intelligence systems and natural ecosystems?

References

  • Carruthers, B.G. (2023): “Progress, not growth: A modest proposal.” Organization Studies, 44 (5), 855–858.
  • Choquet, I., & Claeyé, F. (2024): “Tensions autour de la performance à l’aulne de la transition.” Revue Management des Technologies Organisationnelles, 16, 147–159.
  • de Souza Bispo, M. (2022): “Responsible managing as educational practice.” Organization Management Journal, 19 (4), 155–166.
  • de Souza Bispo, M. (2024): Sociologia da Administração: O Conflito Moral Diante dos Grandes Desafios Societais. Curitiba: Editora Appris.
  • de Souza Bispo, M. (2025): “Response-able Management-as-Practice: The Ability to Respond.” In: M. Cozza, A. Carreri, & B. Poggio (eds.): Ethics of Engagement in Research Practices. Response-ability in Organization and Management. London: Routledge, 74–85,
  • de Vaujany, F.-X., Gherardi, S., & Silva, P. (eds.) (2024): Organization Studies and Posthumanism: Towards a More-than-Human World. London: Routledge.
  • Durieux, C. (2024): “Dépasser l’anthropocentrisme pour étudier la servicisation dans une organisation à but lucratif: Quelques aperçus préliminaires d’une approche posthumaniste de la théorie de la pratique.” Revue de l’Organisation Responsable, 19 (1), 32–35.
  • Gherardi, S., & Laasch, O. (2022): “Responsible management-as-practice: Mobilizing a posthumanist approach.” Journal of Business Ethics, 181, 269–281, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04945-7.
  • Glaser, V.L., Sloan, J., & Gehman, J. (2024): “Organizations as algorithms: A new metaphor for advancing management theory.” Journal of Management Studies, 61 (6), 2748–2769.
  • Gond, J.-P., & Brès, L. (2020): “Designing the tools of the trade: How corporate social responsibility consultants and their tool-based practices created market shifts.” Organization Studies, 41 (5), 703–726.
  • Laasch, O., Moosmayer, D.C., & Antonacopoulou, E.P. (2023): “The interdisciplinary responsible management competence framework: An integrative review of ethics, responsibility, and sustainability competences.” Journal of Business Ethics, 187, 733–757, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05261-4.
  • Leonardi, P.M., & Treem, J.W. (2020): “Behavioral visibility: A new paradigm for organization studies in the age of digitization, digitalization, and datafication.” Organization Studies, 41 (12), 1601–1625.
  • Resch, B., Hoyer, P., & Steyaert, C. (2021): “Affective control in new collaborative work: Communal fantasies of purpose, growth and belonging.” Organization Studies, 42 (5), 787–809.

Frederik Claeyé is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management and Co-Director of the Chair in Innovative Management Practices at ICHEC Brussels Management School, Belgium, as well as a Research Associate at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. Currently, his research focuses on responsible management practices, social entrepreneurship, and poverty entrepreneurship.
Marcelo de Souza Bispo is an Associate Professor at the Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil. He is interested in practice theories, management education, and responsible management. His research sheds light on how practice theories are useful in understanding educational and organizational phenomena. Marcelo has published in journals such as ‘Organization’, ‘Culture and Organization’, and ‘Qualitative Research in Organization and Management’, among others.
Charlotte Durieux is a PhD student at ICHEC Brussels Management School and at Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. She works on management practices, practices theories, responsible management and posthumanism perspectives. Charlotte’s thesis explores the enactment of responsibility and sustainability in management practices in large organization mobilizing a posthumanist-as-practice theory.