Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

In the light of the grand challenges of climate change, biodiversity extinction, growing socioeconomic inequalities, and societal polarization exacerbating under the neoliberal agenda, the question of how we, humans, organize our lives together with other living beings is an urgent matter. Critical and feminist scholars, within Management and Organization Studies (MOS), have long problematized the anthropocentric, androcentric, rationalistic and instrumental definitions of sustainability that fail to capture the multilayered complexities and relationalities sustaining all life forms on Earth (Banerjee, 2003; Irving & Helin, 2018; Ehrnström-Fuentes, 2022; Ergene & Calás, 2023). This body of work argues that rethinking organizations from within a new ecological paradigm must acknowledge that organization theory is far from neutral (Ergene et al., 2021; Ergene & Calás, 2023; Sayers et al., 2022). Scholarly discussions problematize how MOS’ historical roots in power-laden onto-epistemological assumptions and strategies nurture and maintain particular kinds of subject(ivitie)s, materialities, realities and worlds, while oppressing or excluding vulnerable others from the organizational spheres (Dotson, 2014; Chowdhury, 2023).
 
Recent posthumanist and decolonial critiques also highlight the lack of consideration of more-than-human agencies’ central role in shaping organizations and the (un)sustainabilities they produce (Ehrnström- Fuentes & Böhm, 2023; Tallberg & Huopalainen, 2024; Tallberg et al., 2024). What is central to this critique is how dualist thinking and economic rationalism prevalent in managerial approaches to sustainability persistently ignore and obscure the relational interdependences that sustain all life, and hence all organizational existences (Ehrnström-Fuentes & Böhm, 2022).
 
In the field of anthropology, Escobar (2020), and others (de la Cadena & Blaser, 2018) have for long argued that the dualist ontological assumptions that separate the human subject from the rest of nature and the rational mind from the affective body, create absences of other ways of knowing, sensing and being in the world. These absences are actively produced “as nonexistent or as non-credible alternative[s] to what exists” (Escobar, 2020, p. 69). The absences have serious consequences for all life on Earth as what cannot be seen, sensed or accounted for in organizational contexts is also not cared for (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017), but neglected or even killed through unsustainable practices and strategies (de la Cadena and Blaser, 2018). In MOS, absences have mainly been discussed in relation to humans’ embodied experiences, such as gender (Pullen et al., 2017; Pérezts & Mandalaki, 2024), race (e.g., Bell et al., 2021) ableness (e.g., Meldgaard Kjær & van Amsterdam, 2020). Feminist scholars also critic the traditional underrepresentation of women’s and others’ voices in MOS, calling for the need to engage with embodied and affective forms of writing that speak of/to the absent presences that shape our daily experiences in society and at work (Pullen, 2018; Kaasila-Pakanen & Mandalaki, 2023; Strauß, 2024).
 
We use the term ‘absence’ to denote the production of invisibility, othering, silencing, and erasing of nonhuman and more-than-human existences in organization theory, seeking to problematize the centrality of the human subject within MOS. Doing so, we aim at furthering an understanding of how nonhumans and more-than-humans are systemically (re)produced as absent and how this might be overturned. With this, we seek to converse with nascent sustainable organization theory that engages with more-than-human absences, such as multispecies existences (Davies & Riach 2019; Huopalainen, 2022), earthly relations (Valtonen & Salmela, 2023), sociomaterial entanglements (Allen, 2022; Phillips & Jeanes, 2018), more-than-human care (Beacham, 2018; Ehrnström-Fuentes et al., 2025; Roquebert & Debucquet, 2024; Strauß, 2023; Tallberg et al., 2022), ecological imaginaries (Roux-Rousier et al., 2018), and indigenous Earth-based notions of reciprocity and care (Ehrnström-Fuentes, 2022; Jääskeläinen, 2020; Pavlovich & Roche, 2024).
 
This sub-theme, thus, seeks to explore how the dominant human-centric frame within MOS both actively and passively creates absences of more-than-human relationalities and interdependencies among different elements, materialities, beings, or species to enable an expanded view of organizing within a more-than-human world. We invite contributions that make present ways of understanding sustainable organizing as embedded within a web of life that is more-than-verbal, ‘visible’, sensuous, and affective, wishing to nurture scholarly dialogue and reflection around how to think, write, teach and organize with care for and with more-than-human existences. We ask: How do we, as researchers/writers of MOS, account for more-than-human existences whose ways of expression do not (necessarily) occur through human forms of communication, such as (human) language, and how do we (re)present/pre-sense their presence within different organizing contexts? How do we engage with questions of sustainability, responsibility and ethics in MOS research and teaching that contributes to organizing multispecies flourishing?
 
We are especially interested in contributions that engage with and combine feminist new materialism, indigenous epistemologies, ecofeminist approaches and decolonial politics, to both question western dominant perspectives and to critically engage with alternative forms of more-than-human potentialities and their responses to urgent social and organizational problematics at stake.
 
With this focus, we invite a variety of conceptual and empirical contributions exploring but not limited to the following:

• Conceptual or empirical studies exploring the potential of more-than-human materialities and coexistences for sustainability research and organizations

• Diverse methodological investigations (e.g., ethnographies, (post)qualitative research, participant observation etc.) surfacing human and more-than-human relationalities and inter-dependences and their relevance for invigorating organizational life

• Critical work problematizing the marginalization and underrepresentation of non-human and more-thanhuman forms of life in MOS

• Research surfacing the potentials of human and non-human entanglements to inspire more inclusive organizations

• Posthuman ethics and ethics of care approaches emphasizing human and more-than-human entanglements in organizations

• Feminist new materialist perspectives conceptualizing the intersections of humans, non-humans, and more-than-humans to invigorate organizational realities and futures

• Research engaging with decolonial and/or indigenous epistemologies to critic the under-representation and othering of nonhuman, more-than-human others in the MOS research

• Work developing the ethico-political potential/s of human, nonhuman, and more-than-human coexistences and relationalities.

• Alternative narratives and/or autoethnographic work dealing with experiences of marginalization of human and nonhuman others in society and at work

• Research focusing on the potentials of more-than-human MOS approaches to invigorate business school education and pedagogy

References

• Beacham, J. (2018): “Organising food differently: Towards a more-than-human ethics of care for the Anthropocene.” Organization, 25 (4), 533–549.

• Chowdhury, R. (2023): “Misrepresentation of Marginalized Groups: A Critique of Epistemic Neocolonialism.” Journal of Business Ethics, 186, 553–570.

• Davies, O., & Riach, K.(2019): “From manstream measuring to multispecies sustainability? A gendered reading of bee-ing sustainable.” Gender, Work & Organization, 26 (3), 246–266.

• de la Cadena, M., & Blaser, M. (eds.) (2018): A World of Many Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.

• Dotson, K. (2014): “Conceptualizing epistemic oppression.” Social Epistemology, 28 (2), 115–138.

• Ehrnström-Fuentes, M. (2022): “Organising in defense of life: The emergence and dynamics of a territorial movement in Southern Chile.” Organization, 29 (1), 155–177.

• Ehrnström-Fuentes, M., & Böhm, S. (2023): “The Political Ontology of Corporate Social Responsibility: Obscuring the Pluriverse in Place.” Journal of Business Ethics, 185, 245–261.

• Ehrnström-Fuentes, M., Böhm, S., Hagolani-Albov, S., & Tesfaye, L.A. (2025): “Multispecies Organizing in the Web of Life: Ethico-Political Dynamics of Matters of Care in Ecologies-in-Place. “ Business Ethics Quarterly, first published online on May 19, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2025.8.

• Ergene, S., Banerjee, S.B., & Hoffman, A.J. (2021): “(Un)Sustainability and Organization Studies: Towards a Radical Engagement.” Organization Studies, 42 (8), 1319–1335.

• Ergene, S., & Calás, M.B. (2023): “Becoming Naturecultural: Rethinking sustainability for a more-than-human world.” Organization Studies, 44 (12), 1961–1986.

• Huopalainen, A. (2022): “Writing with the bitches.” Organization, 29 (6), 959–978.

• Irving, S., & Helin, J. (2017): “A World for Sale? An Ecofeminist Reading of Sustainable Development Discourse.” Gender, Work & Organization, 25 (3), 264–278.

• Jääskeläinen, T. (2023): “Purification as a tactic of marginalisation in business-community relations: Epistemic dimensions in the exclusion of Indigeneity in Arctic development strategy.” Organization, 31 (8), 1169–1192.

• Kaasila-Pakanen, A.-L., & Mandalaki, E. (2023): „Hysterically y-ours: Reclaiming academic writing as a hysterical practice.” Organization, 32 (1), 53–79.

• Meldgaard Kjær, K., & van Amsterdam, N. (2020): “Pieced together. Writing invisible (dis)abilities in academia.” In: A.F. Herrmann (ed.): The Routledge International Handbook of Organizational Autoethnography. New York, Routledge, 298–312.

• Pavlovich, K., & Roche, M. (2024): “Organising Food Systems Through Ecologies of Care: A Relational Approach.” Journal of Business Ethics, 193, 459–469.

• Pérezts, M., & Mandalaki, E. (2024): “Unsilencing silence on business school sexism: A behind‐the‐scenes narration on regaining voice.” Gender, Work & Organization, 31 (5), 2138–2157.

• Phillips, M., & Jeanes E. (2018): “What are the alternatives? Organising for a socially and ecologically sustainable world.” ephemera, 18 (4), 695–708.

• Pullen, A. (2018): “Writing as labiaplasty.” Organization, 25 (1), 123–130.

• Pullen, A., Rhodes, C., & Thanem, T. (2017): “Affective politics in gendered organizations: Affirmative notes on becoming-woman.” Organization, 24 (1), 105–123.

• Roquebert, C.-I., & Debucquet, G. (2024): “Imagining beyond nature-culture dualism: An exploration of ecological justice.” Organization, 31 (2), 221–246.

• Roux-Rosier, A., Azambuja, R., & Islam, G. (2018): “Alternative visions: Permaculture as imaginaries of the Anthropocene.” Organization, 25( 4), 550–572.

• Sayers, J., Martin, L., & Bell, E. (2022): “Posthuman Affirmative Business Ethics: Reimagining Human–Animal Relations Through Speculative Fiction.” Journal of Business Ethics, 178, 597–608.

• Strauß, A. (2023): Atmospheres of care: Experiments in more-than-human-commoning. Paper presented in sub-theme 53 at the 39^th EGOS Colloquium 2023 in Cagliari (Italy), July 6–8, 2023.

• Strauß, A. (2024): “Performing intimate publics in academia: speak-writing as affective politics for sustainability transformation.” Culture and Organization, 1–15, https://doi.org/10.1080/14759551.2024.2425315.

• Tallberg, L., & Huopalainen, A. (2024): “We are the missing people: On posthumanist onto-epistemologies in organization studies.” In: F.-X. de Vaujany, S. Gherardi, & P. Silva (eds.): Organization Studies and Posthumanism: Towards a More-than-Human World. New York: Routledge, 29–52.

• Tallberg, L., Huopalainen, A., & García-Rosell, J.-C. (2024): “Beyond Anthropocentrism: A Call to Action for Multispecies Inclusivity.” Business & Society, 64 (7), 1263–1268.

• Valtonen, A., & Salmela, T. (2023): “Exploring Earthly relations through curiography.” In: M. Calás & L. Smircich (eds.): A Research Agenda for Organizations Studies, Feminism and New Materialism. Cheltenham: Edward Edgar, 141–159.