Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Research under the label of extreme contexts has seen a vast proliferation of studies (Hällgren et al., 2018). Special issues (Hällgren et al., 2025), methodological pieces (Wright et al., 2023), and the EGOS Standing Working Group 14 (2020–2025) on “Organizing in and for Extreme Contexts” have helped popularize the concept and brought together diverse scholars who share an interest in the extreme. The shared interest in phenomena has attracted scholars from different fields, theoretical stances and communities.
 
Yet, whilst much effort has been put into defining what “context” means, the notion of “extreme” has still not been subject to deep reflection. The notion of extreme is often used as a catchword to qualify a diversity of phenomena other than the context in which an extreme event has occurred. However, how the extreme plays out depends on the cultural, social, and political perspectives of the person who is qualifying a situation as extreme, and whether an emic or etic perspective is taken to define a context as extreme. This observation leads us to suggest moving beyond our shared interest in the phenomenon of the extreme towards a shared theoretical interest of understanding how the extreme comes into being, for whom and why.
 
In this sub-theme, we wish to direct attention to two areas that we believe can inform theorizing the extreme.

First, we ask for contributions that allow us to move towards a broader perspective on what extremeness consists of, away from understanding the extreme as a context or a short-lived event only. This perspective extends the temporal spectrum where extremeness occurs from a single event to a durable state. Discussions might revolve around how individuals, groups, organizations, and societies construct extremeness through their practices (Burrow et al., 2022; de Rond et al., 2022; Sele et al., 2024); how they relate to extremeness in their societies and personal lives (Karam et al., 2024); and how these perspectives and strategies change depending on the perceived nature of the extreme (Kent & Granqvist, 2024), either as an event (e.g., disaster), prolonged situation (e.g., war, famine), or durable state (e.g., social, technological, environmental change) (Rauch & Ansari, 2022). Extremeness in this view, is not necessarily an inherent quality of an event but is constructed through interactions and interpretations.

Second, we seek contributions that provide a deeper investigation of the nature of the extreme and the duality of its character. Here, we connect to the debate on the ontological status of the extreme – is it something inherent and material, a pure social construction, or something else? Consider whether extreme contexts could be qualified based on objective criteria versus participants’ subjective experience of it being extreme (Geisemann & Geiger, 2024; Mikkelsen, 2022). Mortality rates that might qualify a Western workplace as an extreme setting might be felt to be normal business by participants in parts of Africa. Likewise, to what extent does the extreme come from individuals’ and organizations’ relationships to their environment, where the extreme can bring out opposite responses like resilience and vulnerability (Beunza & Stark, 2005; Kutscher & Mayrhofer, 2023)?

We hence invite papers that deal with the following themes, but are not limited to exploring:

• What informs the emergence of urgency and how does urgency affect organizing in the extreme?

• How do multiple crises amplify, influence, and shape our understanding of the extreme?

• How can researchers grapple with the duality of extreme contexts, which seem to be defined by opposites arising together, e.g., hopelessness and profound purpose?

• What is the ontological status of the extreme, given that conventional measures (e.g., mortality rates) often do not align with participants’ experiences of extremeness?

• How does something become extreme – and how does it become durable and sustained, considering for example work conditions, or singular events?

• How can theorizing at, and across, levels (individual, workgroup, organizational, societal, systems, etc.) help us understand the construction of the extreme?

• How do organizations and work teams qualify and manage extreme work?

• How do people construct vulnerability or resilience in the extreme?

• How do insights from research in grand challenges, wicked problems (e.g., poverty or war), and creeping crises (e.g., environmental) inform our theorizing of the extreme?

References

• Beunza, D., & Stark, D. (2005): “Resolving Identities: Successive Crises in a Trading Room after 9/11.” In: N. Foner (ed.): Wounded City: The Social Impact of 9/11 on New York City. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 293–320.
• Burrow, R., Scott, R., & Courpasson, D. (2022): “Where ‘the rules don’t apply’: Organizational isolation and misbehaviour in elite kitchens.” Journal of Management Studies, 59 (5), 1103–1131.
• de Rond, M., Lok, J., & Marrison, A. (2022): “To Catch a Predator: The Lived Experience of Extreme Practices.” Academy of Management Journal, 65 (3), 870–902.
• Geisemann, P., & Geiger, D. (2024): “Crisis? What Crisis? The Contestation of Urgency in Creeping Crises.” Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 32 (4), https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5973.70004.
• Hällgren, M., Geiger, D., Rouleau, L., Sutcliffe, K.M., & Vaara, E. (2025): “Organizing and Strategizing in and for Extreme Contexts: Temporality, Emotions, and Embodiment.” Journal of Management Studies, Special Issue, 32 (3), 1063–1086.
• Hällgren, M., Rouleau, L., & de Rond, M. (2018): “A matter of life or death: How extreme context research matters for management and organization studies.” Academy of Management Annals, 12 (1), 111–153.
• Karam, C.M., DeJordy, R., Creed, W.E.D., Daouk-Öyry, L., Scott, S.P., Geha, C., & Daou, A. (2024): “Resourcing Agency for Sustained Collective Action Amid Creeping Crises.” Organization Studies, 46 (7), 967–994.
• Kent, D., & Granqvist, N. (2024): “Chasing Storms: Temporal Work to Foster Group Engagement under Uncertainty.” Academy of Management Journal, 68 (2), 380–408.
• Kutscher, G., & Mayrhofer, W. (2023): “Mind the Setback! Enacted sensemaking in young workers’ early career transitions.” Organization Studies, 44 (7), 1127–1149.
• Mikkelsen, E.N. (2022): “Looking over your shoulder: Embodied responses to contamination in the emotional dirty work of prison offices.” Human Relations, 75 (9), 1770–1797.
• Rauch, M., & Ansari, S. (2022): “Waging War from Remote Cubicles: How Workers Cope with Technologies That Disrupt the Meaning and Morality of Their Work.” Organization Science, 33 (1), 83–104.
• Sele, K., Danner‐Schröder, A., & Mahringer, C.A. (2025): “Embodied connection work: The role of the lived body in routine recreation in extreme contexts.” Journal of Management Studies, 62 (3), 1300–1329.
• Wright, A.L., Kent, D., Hällgren, M., & Rouleau, L. (2023): „Theorizing as Mode of Engagement in and through Extreme Contexts Research.” Organization Theory, 4 (4), https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877231217310.