Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Antisemitism, i.e. Jew hatred, loathing and discrimination, and within its wider boundaries judeophobia (fear of Jews) and allosemitism (antisemitic as well as philosemitic attitudes regarding Jews as the Other) have been resurging, intensifying and spreading over the past decade throughout the world, notably in Western democracies, from America through Europe, to Australia. It affects, first and foremost, Jewish lives wherever they are and whatever they do: a necessity not to display clothing items (such as the Star of David ornament or wearing a kippa), the removal of the mezuzah at home entries, or avoiding talking Hebrew in public (FRA, 2024). But the current reality has also wider ramifications, for instance, for people thought to be Jewish even though they are not (Altman et al., 2022), or for other minorities implicated in, for example, The Great Replacement Theory (Walle, 2023). Indeed, “when we see it [antisemitism], it tells us that there are strains and stresses in society. It [antisemitism] is the canary in the mine” (UK Parliament, 2016).
 
Unavoidably and necessarily, the current ongoing and escalating situation calls attention to the workplace too. And here we are faced with a scholarly vacuum. We know next to nothing about the workplace (writ large) as far as Jews as individuals, as a minority group and an ethnoreligious collective are concerned.
 
That was not always the case. Until the early 1980s, scholarly research on workplace antisemitism featured in academic discourse (though it has never been a major theme) exposing antisemitism, as then manifested at the workplace, affecting all organizational and career strands, from university entry options, through recruitment and promotion chances, to off-work aspects such as membership of social clubs and voluntary associations (Zweigenhaft, 1984). Scholarly interest faded when workplace discrimination against Jews, predominately in the USA, seemed to dissipate in the latter 1980s. In tandem, positive discrimination (in the USA) and equal opportunities legislation (in Western democracies) were gaining momentum, and with them, diversity management as a scholarly domain came into being and has been thriving since. But, strangely, Jews don’t feature in diversity textbooks and one has to search hard to find any reference to them in the diversity management literature: it seems “Jews Don’t Count”, as David Baddiel’s (2021) book title exposes. Is it because Jews are considered ‘off white’ (Shabi, 2024), a perception that also feeds into the present anti-Israeli charge as a Western ‘colonialist’ enterprise – even though the majority of Israel’s Jewish population trace their origins outside Europe and the ‘West’? Or is it a case of erasive antisemitism (Reut, 2021), an implicit anti-Jewish manifestation?
 
In these escalating circumstances that Jews find themselves, evidence start accumulating, both anecdotal (Stephens, 2024) and empirical (ADL, 2024) that Jews nowadays are facing growing discrimination at the workplace.
 
The Call for Sub-theme Proposals for the 42^nd EGOS Colloquium 2026, charging that “organizations in the third millennium wield greater power and bear an equally greater responsibility than in the past”, resonates with this sub-theme’s Call for Papers. Indeed, organizations may be posited as antidote to enshrined human bias (Kahneman et al., 2021). And, with the current emphasis on identity as a central life motif within and without organizations, the reverberations of workplace antisemitism underscore the urgency in addressing it. Thus, a statement such as the following by a management scholar – “To grow up Jewish, at least in my time, was to grow up with the knowledge that one’s possibilities were limited. One knew that one could not be a member of certain groups, hold certain occupations, even go to certain schools...” (Schwartz, 1989, p. 304) – which could have passed half a century ago, would be considered unacceptable today. One wonders, though, whether the past common practice of Jews changing their surnames to avoid discrimination, notably in the workplace, is going to resurface again.
 
And yet, the present reality is more complex, or if you wish, nuanced. Antisemitism is also a matter of geography, possibly because antisemitism acts as a cultural code (Volkov, 1978) signifying larger important life positions, which crystallize attitudes and beliefs, particularly during times of strife and societal polarization. Contemporary Poland is a case in point, whereby attitudes towards Jews coalesce with a host of other worldview positions (Krzemiński, 2019). So is the case in Malaysia, where antisemitic beliefs operate as a symbolic rejection of secularism and the West (Ainsley, 2019), manifesting a social-political stand, thereby facilitating a counter-narrative that views Jews in a highly positive light. Similarly, in Harbin (China), Jewish heritage is heralded as exemplary early 20th century entrepreneurship (Horn, 2021), in an epoch when entrepreneurship is highly prized, underscoring an idealized positive attitude towards Jews. But then, there are officially no Jews in Malaysia (Judaism is not a recognized religion), and the number of Chinese Jews is truly miniscule, reminding us of what Sartre (1946) said that antisemitism (and ‘othering’, more generally) is the product of a fantasized construction of the anti-Semite, not the Jew.
 
In this sub-theme, we wish to build on our Sub-Plenary at the 38^th EGOS Colloquium 2022 in Vienna, titled “The Context of Context: Facing Antisemitism at the Workplace”. Our aim is to bring together researchers who engage with the topic of workplace antisemitism specifically, but also others who may be using it as a reflection platform on relevant issues. Overall then, we invite contributions linked, but not limited to topics such as:

• Effects of antisemitic behaviour in working teams

• Unintended consequences of minority protection at the workplace

• The archetypal Other and their role/position in working teams

• Facing/dealing with stereotypes in diverse teams across cultural boundaries

• Othering in different countries and cultures and its effects for organizations and teams

• Religious and racial stereotypes in organizational culture

• The role of exogenous shocks (cosmological episodes; cf. Orton & O’Grady, 2016), e.g., war, ethnic conflicts, major financial crises, large scale political shifts, on the conduct towards religious and ethnic minorities at the workplace

• Antisemitic tendencies in societies and their effects on organizations

• The role of context and culture in facilitating and countering antisemitism and other minorities’ mistreatment

• Antisemitism and its role in business school/university curricula

• Theoretical foundations for describing and explaining the role of antisemitism in organizations and teams

• Identity formation of minority groups in the workplace

• Boundaries of ‘whiteness’ as represented in organizational life

• Combatting antisemitism (& other ‘isms’) through institutional regulations and norms 

References

• ADL (2024): Jewish and Israeli Americans Face Discrimination in the Job Market, December 4, 2024, https://www.adl.org/resources/report/jewish-and-israeli-americans-face-discrimination-job-market.
• Ainsley, M.J. (2019): Anti-Semitism in Contemporary Malaysia. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Altman, Y., Koll, J., Mayrhofer, W., Müller-Camen, M., & Schneebaum, A. (2022): “Contours of Workplace Antisemitism: Initial Thoughts and a Research Agenda.” In: A. Lange, K. Mayerhofer, D. Porat, & L.H. Schiffman (eds.): Confronting Antisemitism from Perspectives of Philosophy and Social Sciences: An End to Antisemitism! Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 125–154.
• Baddiel, D. (2021): Jews Don’t Count. London: TLS Books.
• FRA (2024): Jewish People’s Experiences and Perceptions of Antisemitism. Vienna: FRA
• Horn, D. (2021): People Love Dead Jews. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
• Kahneman, D., Sibony, O., & Sunstein, C.R. (2021): Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment. London: William Collins.
• Krzemiński, I. (2019): “Polish National Antisemitism.” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, 31, 515–542.
• Orton, J.D., & O’Grady, K.A. (2016): “Cosmology episodes: A reconceptualization.” Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, 13 (3), 226–245.
• Reut Group (2021): Erasive Anti-Semitism. A New Threat Arising within Contemporary Progressive Discourse. Policy Paper, Version A. Tel-Aviv: Reut Group.
• Sartre, J.-P. (1946): Réflexions sur la question juive. Paris: Gallimard.
• Schwartz, H.S. (1989): “Review of ‘The Outsiders: Jews and Corporate America’ by A.B. Korman.” Academy of Management Review, 14 (2), 303–305.
• Shabi, R. (2024): Off White: The Truth About Antisemitism. London: OneWorld Publications.
• Stephens, B. (2024): “The Year American Jews Woke Up.” The New York Times, October 4, 2024.
• Volkov, S. (1978): “Antisemitism as a Cultural Code: Reflections on the History and Historiography of Antisemitism in Imperial Germany.” The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 23 (1), 25–46.
• Walle, A.H. (2023): The Believers and the Great Replacement. London: Routledge.
• UK Parliament (2016): Archbishop of Canterbury gives evidence on migration and asylum. Evidence session with Archbishop of Canterbury and Migration Watch UK on migration and asylum at the House of Commons, June 7, 2016, https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/83/home-affairs-committee/news/100704/archbishop-of-canterbury-gives-evidence-on-migration-and-asylum/.
• Zweigenhaft, R.L. (1984): Who Gets to the Top? Executive Suite Discrimination in the Eighties. New York: Institute of Human Relations.