Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

The world of work and organizing stands at a critical juncture. Organizations face an unprecedented wave of hybridization (Petani & Mengis, 2024) and AI integration (Anthony et al., 2024) where human interactions are increasingly mediated by, entangled with or even replaced by artificial agents. These technologies not only enable new forms of collaboration, but also fundamentally reshape how we experience presence and absence, belonging and alienation, connection and disconnection in organizational settings. Exploring these dynamics seems crucial for maintaining organizational cohesion and solidarity, fostering creativity, and supporting well-being in increasingly hybrid work environments (Aroles & Küpers, 2022; Hafermalz & Riemer, 2020; Hondros et al., 2024). This sub-theme aims to investigate how the concept of co-presence can help organization scholars understand – and potentially enhance – human connections in modern organizational contexts.
 
The conceptualization of co-presence has undergone significant transformation, challenging traditional assumptions about physical proximity and social interaction. Early perspectives, grounded in the micro-sociologies of Durkheim (1912) and Goffman (1959), privileged physical co-location and face-to-face interactions as fundamental prerequisites for creating collective effervescence and social bonds (Collins, 2020; Vine, 2023). However, this view has been increasingly problematized by contemporary organizational realities (Bancou, 2024; Gibson, 2020; Grabher et al., 2018; Taskin et al., 2024; Schiemer et al., 2022; Vidolov, 2022). For instance, Knorr-Cetina’s (2009, p. 63) concept of ‘synthetic situations’ demonstrated that purely physical co-presence can no longer serve as the “basic working unit” for studying social situations in our interconnected world. This theoretical shift has opened new avenues for approaching co-presence, with scholars extending the concept beyond spatial proximity to encompass various forms of technologically mediated connection (Campos-Castillo & Hitlin, 2013; Zhao, 2003). These developments raise fundamental questions about how we experience and organize being together in settings where the boundaries between physical, virtual, and AI- mediated interactions become increasingly porous.
 
The lack of informal interactions and spontaneous encounters can foster sentiments of social isolation and invisibility, potentially making the social fabric of organizations more fragile (Endrissat & Islam, 2022). Even when co-workers stay connected through digital technologies, new phenomena like ‘present-but-online’ behaviors emerge (Christensen & Foss, 2021), affecting attention patterns and social dynamics. Recent work highlights how the individualizing tendency of hybrid work arrangements creates ‘new vulnerabilities’ within organizational collectives, suggesting the need to reframe co-presence and its link with vulnerability (Bancou, 2024). Research has also shown that platforms in otherwise alienating online work environments can serve as safe ‘spaces of appearance’, enabling the emergence of personal meaning and identity (Hondros, 2023) based on mutual awareness. Furthermore, research has emphasized the need to organize co-presence in both physical and virtual environments, arguing that an oscillation between ‘converging’ and ‘diverging’ co-presence – taken as “individuals’ active and mutual orientation towards one another” – facilitates creative collaboration (Schiemer et al., 2022, p. 2).
 
In light of these developments, we face a critical paradox: while human connection remains essential to organizational life, our increasingly hybrid and AI-enhanced work environments may fundamentally transform– or even challenge – how we experience and organize co- presence. How can we sustain authentic connections and collective engagement in settings where the boundaries between physical, virtual, and AI-mediated interactions become increasingly blurred? What new theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches do we need to understand and support co-presence in these emerging organizational contexts?
 
To address these questions, this sub-theme aims to invite scholarship that seeks to integrate and extend our understanding of co-presence in novel ways. While recent developments in phenomenology, social psychology, economic geography or communication studies have provided valuable insights into presence and connection, these have been only partially integrated into organizational research. At the same time, organizational scholars have developed rich insights about hybrid work and human-AI collaboration that could significantly inform broader theoretical discussions about co-presence (e.g., Chamakiotis et al., 2024; de Vaujany et al., 2021; Justesen & Plesner, 2023; Moser et al., 2022; Vesala, 2023).
 
Furthermore, organizational research has intensified its interest in organizational spaces and places as socially constructed (e.g. Cnossen & Bencherki, 2019; Dacin et al., 2024; De Vaujany et al., 2019; Yacoub & Haeflinger, 2024) or atmospheric (Jørgensen & Holt, 2019; Leclair, 2023), and the concept of co-presence as a sense of ‘being aware’ (Grabher et al., 2018) or ‘becoming together’ (Bancou, 2024) can meaningfully contribute to these debates. The purpose of this sub-theme is thus to help update our understanding of co-presence in ways that bridge different theoretical traditions and methodological approaches, while addressing the practical challenges that modern organizations face.
 
Some potential directions which are interesting from the perspective of the proposed sub-theme:
 
Empirical avenues:

• Examining co-presence across diverse organizational configurations (platform organizations, virtual teams, immersive environments, AI-enhanced workplaces)

• Understanding temporal presence and absence patterns in technology-mediated work settings

• Studying co-presence dynamics in creative and knowledge-intensive work

• Analyzing the transformation of organizational culture and social bonds in hybrid environments

• Investigating emergent forms of human-AI interaction and collaboration

Theoretical avenues:

• Developing frameworks that capture the complexity of co-presence in AI-enhanced settings

• Building integrative perspectives that bridge phenomenology, process philosophy, sociomateriality, and practice theories

• Conceptualizing collective presence in contemporary hybrid environments

• Understanding the interplay between human and artificial presence

• Theorizing embodiment and affect in technology-mediated work contexts

Methodological avenues:

• Crafting innovative approaches for studying co-presence across multiple spaces and modalities

• Developing methods suited to capture hybrid interactions and experiences

• Designing techniques for investigating human-AI relationships through co-presence

• Adapting research tools for contemporary forms of presence

• Advancing ethnographic approaches for complex organizational settings

This sub-theme’s focus on co-presence aligns particularly well with the 42nd EGOS Colloquium’s innovative hybrid organizing model. As the first EGOS Colloquium to adopt a primarily online format complemented by localized face-to-face interactions, the Colloquium itself becomes a living laboratory for examining how academic communities can maintain connections and collective engagement across physical and virtual spaces. This format offers an unprecedented opportunity to reflect on and experiment with new forms of scholarly co- presence and community building.
 

References

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