Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

The contemporary polycrisis – characterized by intersecting sectors, scales, and species – calls for organizational approaches capable of responding effectively to the complex challenges of the Anthropocene. This sub-theme invites scholars to explore new possibilities that move beyond human-centered perspectives and to develop modes of organizing that reintegrate human and more-than-human worlds.
 
We focus on employing the concepts and experiences of “bodies” and “embodiment” as media to relate the study of human organization with the cultures of the nature and its multitude of environments. Specifically, we seek to understand how being embodied – and the processes of embodiment, de-embodiment, and re-embodiment – can facilitate integration across different realms and dimensions of organizing and managing. By positioning bodily presence and enfleshed embodiment as foundational for a more-than-human approach, we encourage contributions toward developing responsible and sustainable organizational practices challenging traditional human-centric models (see Küpers, 2015).
 
Organization theory, like many fields in the humanities and social sciences, has historically been rooted in anthropocentric assumptions and a perceived division between nature and culture (Purser et al., 1996; Heikkurinen et al., 2016). This paradigm privileges humans, viewing non-human entities – whether artifacts, animals, or ecosystems – primarily as resources for human needs and desires. Overcoming the anthropocentric framing requires adopting organizational modes that engage with not only human relations (Heikkurinen et al., 2021). We are keen on broadening our understanding of the community of life and recognizing the profound interconnections with the rest of the world (Abram, 1996; Haraway, 2008). Such a shift reminds us of our embeddedness in an earthly cosmos – an entity not created by humans, beyond our control, and exceeding full comprehension (Abram, 2024; Heikkurinen, 2024) – and the need for embodied, convivial modes of living (Küpers, 2022).
 
While the question of embodiment has traditionally been linked exclusively to the human body, recent scholarship increasingly recognizes bodily exchanges between humans and non-humans. Nevertheless, this engagement still requires further exploration beyond anthropocentric frameworks of organizing. In the context of the Anthropocene (Heikkurinen et al., 2016, 2019, 2021; Wright et al., 2018; Küpers, 2021), anthropocentrism remains underexplored and insufficiently critiqued within organization theory, particularly regarding its implications for ecocentric organizational and management theorizing (Purser et al., 1995; Shrivastava, 1995; Starik & Rands, 1995; Starik, 1995; O’Doherty & Statler, 2019).
 
While the term organization may evoke images of biological bodiliness, organization theory must re-integrate bodies and embodiment beyond the human sphere. An (re-)embodied organization comprises not only individual or collective human bodies but also a diversity of other biosocial bodies (Labatut, 2023) – entities that are earthbound and situated within the broader ecological body of the Earth. Building on the turn to the body in philosophy, social science, and the humanities (Merleau-Ponty, [1945], 2012), this stream invites contributions that explore the role of re-embodied phenomena and processes in organization studies and practice (Küpers, 2015, 2022; Styhre, 2004).
 
We invite participants to explore, among others, the following questions:

• What ontological, epistemological, and ethical assumptions underpin more-than-human, re-embodied ways (practices) and models (theories) of organizing and organizations?

• What are the implications of conducting organizational research from a more-than-human perspective, particularly regarding embodied methodologies?

• How might theories and practices related to bodily senses, and sense-making, meaning-making, and experience inspire more-than-human modes of organizing?

• What is the significance of living bodies and affective embodiment for a post-dualistic understanding of ambiguity, non-linearity, and complexity in organizational practices of care and creativity related to more-than-human worlds?

• What does it mean to integrate nature and culture in natureculture approaches to organizing, and what are the implications for an eco-bio-socio-cultural being and becoming?

• How can organizational bodies relate to the more-than-humans concept such as Earth-bodies (Mazis, 2002) or ecological bodies (Parikka & Heikkurinen, forthcoming)?

• How do re-embodied organizational practices vary across different temporal and spatial contexts?

• What political and social justice issues (including but not limited to identities associated with race, class, gender, ability, etc.) arise in re-embodied organizing, particularly regarding responsibility and power distribution in relation to more-than-human worlds?

• How might re-embodied organizing relate to themes of sustainability, sufficiency, resilience, regeneration, and degrowth?

• How do embodied organizational practices interact with, utilize, being utilized or resist technologies such as AI?

• What are the practical implications for organizational learning and leadership education aimed at fostering more-than-human approaches to sustainable organizing?

 
We welcome contributions addressing these and related issues, questions, and challenges, or paradoxes. The invitation is open to a diversity of viewpoints, disciplinary fields, and cultural backgrounds related to the study of organizations, encouraging interdisciplinary and meta-analytic frameworks, particularly those aligned with integral methodologies. Our goal is to foster the development of new theoretical insights and practical applications for organizing in careful and creative more-than-human ways.

The sub-theme itself will serve as a kind of embodied context: a workshop space facilitating in-depth discussion, rather than merely formal paper presentations. We seek contributions that challenge reductionist models and offer integrated perspectives on sustainable, re-embodied, careful and creative forms of organizing beyond anthropocentrism.
 

References

• Abram, D. (1996): The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. New York: Pantheon Books.

• Abram, D. (2024): “On the Origin of the Phrase ‘More-Than-Human’.” In: C. Rodríguez-Garavito (ed.): More than Human Rights: An Ecology of Law, Thought and Narrative for Earthly Flourishing. New York: NYU Law, 341–347.

• Haraway, D. (2008): When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

• Heikkurinen, P. (2024): Degrowth: An Experience of Being Finite. Minneapolis: MayFly Books.

• Heikkurinen, P., Clegg, S., Pinnington, A.H., Nicolopoulou, K., & Alcaraz, J.M. (2021): “Managing the Anthropocene: Relational agency and power to respect planetary boundaries.” Organization & Environment, 34 (2), 267–286.

• Heikkurinen, P., Rinkinen, J., Järvensivu, T., Wilén, K., & Ruuska, T. (2016): “Organising in the Anthropocene: an ontological outline for ecocentric theorising.” Journal of Cleaner Production, 113, 705–714.

• Heikkurinen, P., Ruuska, T., Wilén, K., & Ulvila, M. (2019): “The Anthropocene exit: Reconciling discursive tensions on the new geological epoch.” Ecological Economics, 164, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106369.

• Küpers, W. (2015): Phenomenology of the Embodied Organization: The Contribution of Merleau-Ponty for Organizational Studies and Practice. Bastingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

• Küpers, W. (2021): “From the Anthropocene to an ‘Ecocene’ – Eco-Phenomenological Perspectives on Embodied, Anthrodecentric Transformations towards Enlivening Practices of Organising Sustainably.” Sustainability, 12 (9), https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093633.

• Küpers, W. (2022): “Integrating enfleshed prâxis, practices, phrónêsis and sustainable action for organising and embodied living common(ing) and commonviviality.” In: F.-X. de Vaujany, J. Aroles, & M. Pérezts (eds.): Phenomenologies and Organisation Studies: Problematising Management and Organizing as Appearing and Appearances. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 577–603.

• Labatut, J. (2023): “Towards a biosocial turn in management and organization research? Proposals for a paradigm shift.” Organization, 30 (6), 1230–1237.

• Mazis, G.A. (2002): Earthbodies: Rediscovering Our Planetary Senses. New York: State University of New York Press.

• Merleau-Ponty, M. (1995): The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

• Merleau-Ponty, M. (2003): Nature Course Notes from the College de France. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

• Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012): Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

• O’Doherty, D., & Statler, M. (2019): “The Coming Crisis of Organization Studies: Gaiagraphy and New Political Imaginaries.” Academy of Management Proceedings, 2019 (1), https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2019.18256abstract.

• Parikka, K. & Heikkurinen, P. (forthcoming): “Reorienting desires: Degrowth for an ecological civilization.” In: M.A. Peters, B.J. Green, G.W. Misiaszek, & X. Zhu, X. (eds.): Handbook of Ecological Civilization: Concept, Philosophy, and Pedagogy. New York: Springer.

• Shrivastava, P. (1995): “The Role of Corporations in Achieving Ecological Sustainability.” Academy of Management Review, 20 (4), 936–960.

• Starik, M. (1995): “Should trees have managerial standing? Toward stakeholder status for non-human nature.” Journal of Business Ethics, 14, 207–217.

• Starik, M., & Rands, G.P. (1995): “Weaving an Integrated Web: Multilevel and Multisystem Perspectives of Ecologically Sustainable Organizations.” Academy of Management Review, 20 (4), 908–935.

• Styhre, A. (2004): “The (re)embodied organization: Four perspectives on the body in organizations.” Human Resource Development International, 7 (1), 101–116.

• Wright, C., Nyberg, D., Rickards, L., & Freund, J. (2018): “Organizing in the Anthropocene.” Organization, 25 (4), 455–471.