Call for Papers

Recent years have shown the rise of many sources of “novel risks” (Hardy & Maguire, 2020), like genetically modified organisms, persistent organic pollutants, unknown viruses, climatic events of greater intensity and frequency, and unhinged artificial intelligence. Such risks are characterized by high uncertainty and unfamiliarity and, therefore, cannot be identified using established quantitative risk assessment techniques. Moreover, through the concept of the “Anthropocene”, management scholars have acknowledged a new era of unknown and systemic risks (Wissman-Weber & Levy, 2018), which calls for radical changes to our modes of living and organizing (Wright et al., 2018).
 
The problem with efforts to identify and manage such novel risks and challenges is that organizational and institutional efforts are often based on past experiences (Beck, 1992). This backward-looking perspective may encourage the anticipation of the wrong kind of risk and a defensive preoccupation with providing demonstrable evidence of formal risk management and compliance (Power, 2007). Studies of organizational resilience also reveal a tendency to rely on highly bureaucratic, command-and-control structures that inhibit the adaptive behaviours needed to overcome crises caused by novel situations and risks (Williams et al., 2017).
 
To understand how organizations can address these challenges, scholars call for "creative" approaches based on the ability to anticipate and imagine risks, as well as the ability to adapt and respond when risks materialize as harmful events. To do so, organizations should seek to enable organizational creativity in the face of novel and unexpected risks throughout a risk cycle (Hardy & Maguire 2020): prospectively, as they seek to identify potential threats (and opportunities) thr,ough creative problematization practices that help challenge standard assumptions about the world, and understand the meaning of new warning signs and events (Vaughan, 1996); in real time, as they face risks that materialize in concrete threats, through creative improvisation and bricolage (Weick, 1993); and retrospectively, as they seek to draw lessons from failures through creative learning practices to better prepare for subsequent prospective and real-time organizing of risk.
 
However, constructivist approaches to the study of risk also show how creativity can be a source of risk. The notion of the “risk object” (Hilgartner, 1992) foregrounds that what may be seen as a solution to a risk at one moment may later become a source of risk. Risk management by some organizations can increase risks for others in an emergent, complex, and constantly evolving ecology of risks (Hardy & Maguire, 2020). These dynamics have clear implications at both the organizational and societal levels. For example, large-scale information systems infrastructure projects have enabled successful financial risk management for a while, but at the same time have created new operational risks in markets. Current technological solutions to the climate crisis may “lock in” key infrastructure, preventing the adoption of more effective solutions in the future.
 
Such issues and concerns open up many opportunities for research on risk assessment, management, and response – the organization of risk – as a creative process. An “organizing risk” perspective (Hardy et al., 2020) sheds light on creativity as a source of both risk management solutions and novel risks. Such a perspective also questions the meaning of “lasting” creativity, emphasizing how creative efforts can affect organizations, individuals, regions, and society in different ways and over different time periods. To be sure, there is much “riskwork” (Power, 2016) to be studied by scholars and done by practitioners to understand the role of “creativity” in managing risk. Such riskwork continues to increase in various domains (Hardy et al., 2020) as societies grapple with the impact of existential challenges such as pandemics, climate change, the development of artificial intelligence, and ongoing regional or global conflicts.
 
We are interested in papers that examine these issues empirically, theoretically, and/or critically, as well as the role of risk in contemporary organizing more broadly. Because issues of risk cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries, we particularly welcome papers that draw on multiple perspectives to better understand the complex relationship between organizational risk and the boundary conditions of “lasting” creativity, including organizational theory, strategy, and accounting, as well as the social studies of finance or science and technology.
 
More specifically, we invite papers that explore risk in and around organizations in relation to the main theme of the EGOS Colloquium 2025, as outlined in the indicative research questions below.
 
Organizing risk for “lasting creativity”:

• How can organizing risk support creativity?

• How does the relation between organizing risk and creativity change throughout a risk cycle?

• How does the continuous emergence of “novel risks” affect creativity?

• What can organizing risk help to develop creative solutions to address Anthropocenic risks?

• To what extent is the growing regulation of risk facilitating or hampering an organization’s capacity to address risks through innovation?

 
The effects of “lasting creativity” on organizing risk:

• How do efforts to make creativity last contribute to new forms of risk?

• How do creative processes make risk displacement invisible or, conversely, visible and actionable?

• How do individuals and organizations address the tensions inherent in creative work, such as that between the need to rely on pre-defined frames of reference to deal with clearly defined dangers and simultaneously stepping outside of those frames to deal with novel risks?

• What are the implications of creative efforts on the distribution of risks across individual, organizational and societal levels of analysis?

• How can creativity inform transformational resilience in the face of anthropocenic risks, rather than a return to outdated patterns of organizing?

 
Leveraging risk as a frame of inquiry to enrich organization studies:

• How can we articulate multi-disciplinary perspectives to build a comprehensive and integrative framework of risk? Is such a framework desirable?

• How does riskwork mask or reproduce power relations?

• How might research on risk inform research on the relationship between organizations and the natural environment?

• How do social values, norms, and emotions shape organizing risk processes? How do they challenge risk management “scientism” and expert work?

References

• Beck, U. (1992): Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: SAGE Publications.

• Hardy, C., & Maguire, S. (2020): “Organizations, risk translation, and the ecology of risks: The discursive construction of a novel risk.” Academy of Management Journal, 63 (3), 685–716.
• Hardy, C., Maguire, S., Power, M., & Tsoukas, H. (2020): “Organizing risk: Organization and management theory for the risk society.” Academy of Management Annals, 14 (2), 1032–66.
• Hilgartner, S. (1992): “The social construction of risk objects: Or, how to pry open networks of risk.” In: J.F. Short & L. Clarke (eds.): Organizations, Uncertainties and Risk. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 39–53.
• Power, M. (2007): Organized Uncertainty: Designing a World of Risk Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Power, M. (2016): Riskwork : Essays on the Everyday Life of Risk Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Vaughan, D. (1996): The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology Culture and Deviance at NASA. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Weick, K.E. (1993): “The collapse of sensemaking in organizations: The Mann Gulch disaster.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 38 (4), 628–52.
• Williams, T.A., Gruber, D.A., Sutcliffe, K.M., Shepherd, D.A., & Zhao, E.Y. (2017): “Organizational response to adversity: Fusing crisis management and resilience research streams.” Academy of Management Annals, 11 (2), 733–769.
• Wissman-Weber, N.K., & Levy, D.L. (2018): “Climate adaptation in the Anthropocene: Constructing and contesting urban risk regimes.” Organization, 25 (4), 491–516.
• Wright, C., Nyberg, D., Rickards, L., & Freund, J. (2018): “Organizing in the Anthropocene.” Organization, 25 (4), 455–471.
•