33rd EGOS Colloquium, Copenhagen 2017
Call for sub-theme proposals
Copenhagen, Denmark
The Good Organization is often depicted as the efficient organization a particular means to achieve some pre-given end or purpose. But efficiency alone can hardly guarantee
that an organization will be a force for the greater good, public as well as private. To that end, other ideals and aspirations
have been frequently advocated: diversity, care, excellence, sustainability, health, play, transparency and responsibility,
to name but some of the most obvious. Organizations structured according to these ideals, it is argued, can and should result
in better products and services, better people, better workplaces and better societies.
The Good Organization is both a very tempting project and one inherently ridden with tensions: sustainability may partly
function as a compensation for mindless overconsumption, diversity can be seen as a tokenistic attempt to remedy effects of
marginalization, health may entail new forms of exclusion and discipline for the unhealthy, and playfulness potentially undermines
both personal and professional integrity. More generally, the Organization structured around one overarching Good may end
up as something akin to totalitarianism, an organization from which dissent, argument and conflict are excluded in favour
of conformity, uniformity and compliance
Shaped by Scandinavian welfare traditions, the Danish organizational landscape is often deemed radically benevolent to high
degrees of inclusion and participation as well as leading developments in the areas of work-life balance, sustainability,
equality, transparency and other contemporary markers of The Good Organization. At the same time, a distinctive Danish tradition
of compromise and glossing over antagonisms might mask the conflicts inherent to the pursuit of The Good Organization. For
its part, the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) has cultivated an interdisciplinary approach to the role of business in society,
implicitly encouraging but also interrogating the idea of The Good Organization. At the same time, though, CBSs self-description
as the Business University is itself an ongoing compromise in the continuing antagonisms besetting many business
schools in one way or another, between their loyalty to business interests and engagement with societal issues. At Copenhagen
Business School we appreciate the opportunity to celebrate our 100 year anniversary by hosting the EGOS Colloquium in 2017
and explicitly reflecting on the aspirations, interventions, and struggles of The Good Organization.
As we indicated above, the notion of The Good Organization can be approached from a variety of different conceptual and normative
positions and generate discussions about a range of contemporary organizational phenomena. We encourage the submission of
sub-theme proposals for this Colloquium, which seek to explore and interrogate the idea of The Good Organization in all its
potential plurality.
Sub-theme proposals may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
For any further questions, please contact