Call for Papers

As a philosophical tradition, Pragmatism offers organization studies a theory of creative collective action aimed at improving human efforts and experience (Simpson & den Hond, 2021; Lorino 2018). A century ago, leading pragmatists wrote compelling analyses on ‘creative intelligence’ (Dewey, 1917) and ‘creative experience’ in organizing (Follett, 1924), a theme furthered in organizational contexts by later scholars who explore the “insights from pragmatism” for “organizational creativity” (Arjaliès et al., 2013), the pragmatist view of “learning as creative imagination” (Elkjaer, 2018) and “the pragmatist stress on creativity” for meeting complex situations and grand challenges (Kistruck & Shantz, 2022). As Joas (1996) states, “pragmatism is, succinctly, a theory of situated creativity”. Pragmatism offers a rich theoretical basis for the sub-theme (i) to analyze organizing and managing practices as themselves creative inquiries, and (ii) to engage in the creative (re)imagining of research, through abductive, emergent research practices.

Today, organizations (corporate/non-corporate, government/non-government) are confronted by increasingly complex and contested situations that demand or attract them to address their situation in new and responsible ways. Such challenges include sustainability development, climate change, gender, diversity and other social inequalities, health care equality, youth participation in democracy, generative A.I. technologies, etc. Complex, uncertain and ambiguous situations require a capacity to collectively draw on diverse forms of experience and creativity to imagine and create new responses that ameliorate the often-contested situation; new resources are needed to reconstruct context as creative contextualization for research and practice (Nguyen & Tull, 2022).

Pragmatism provides crucial resources for organizing abductive discovery (Golden-Biddle, 2020; 2024; Dunne & Dougherty, 2016), stakeholder involvement (Freeman et al., 2020), design practices (Rylander et al., 2021), or taking inspiration from inquiry practices for noticing differently (Revsbæk & Simpson, 2022), as well as creating relationships that enable people to grapple with challenging situations whose exploration and resolution matters (Golden-Biddle, 2024). Pragmatism’s ideas on democracy and group organization (Follett, 1918) emphasize the role of creative inquiry to (re)connect organizations, their governance and management, their stakeholders, and the society beyond-stakeholders in a renewed, more-inclusive paradigm of responsibility (Gherardi & Laasch, 2021). This is achievable through an experimental re-inventing of their relationships with the social/environmental situations they are part of. As such, (self-)governing and managing practices perform as integrative, creative processes of inquiry themselves.
 
Pragmatists view creativity as an embodied social act, where reasoned thought is inextricable from affect and emotion, and which can simultaneously pursue social utility and aesthetic accomplishments that are beyond “museum concepts of art” (Dewey, 1934). Human activity is intrinsically creative (Joas, 1996; Follett, 1924) and the creativity of acting links the development of selves and communities to that of situations (Mead, 1934). As suggested by Pragmatism’s early organization theorist, Mary Parker Follett, democratic management, and governance is a process of creative experience and integrative development. This process relies on the dynamics of circular responding and functional relating to evolve situations, communities, and the human growth of individuals (Follett, 1918) through “togethering” situations in research (Revsbæk & Beavan, 2024) and in organization. The pragmatist view of creativity involves enactment of symbolic and material resources in ways that enable imagining, rigorous testing, and valuation of “what may be” to generate improvements in organizational practices (Simpson & den Hond, 2021). A pivotal mechanism enabling such disciplined creative imagining is the abductive mode of thinking introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce and furthered by scholars in organization and management studies (Golden-Biddle, 2020; Dunne & Dougherty, 2016).
 
This sub-theme seeks to ignite curiosity about insights we can create by relating Pragmatist ideas to challenging situations. The sub-theme welcomes contributions that creatively address topical issues by exploring the generative interplay between creativity, experience, and disruption, through dialogical, integrative, and inclusive engagement and other possibilities inspired by Pragmatism in management and organizing processes. Responding to an emergent and evolving ethico-onto-epistemological situation in organization studies and beyond, the sub-theme encourages contributions that explore what Pragmatism brings to the epistemological and methodological borderlands of new methodologies in management and organization studies often informed by feminist theory, post-qualitative inquiry, new materialism, process theory, etc.
 
The sub-theme invites empirical, conceptual, and methodological papers on topics including (but not exclusively):

• Emancipatory potential of pragmatist ideas for engagement, organizing and management in practice and research: How can pragmatist ideas of situated creativity, pluralism, and integration (Follett, 1924; Seigfried, 1996) help both the researcher and practitioner engage complex ethical issues in organizational life and research such as sustainability, diversity, inequalities, and technological change?

• Creative “reconstruction” of issues and organizations: How can pragmatist abductive reasoning (Golden-Biddle, 2020; Dunne & Dougherty, 2016), dialogical mediated inquiry (Lorino et al., 2011), and integrative process and experimentation (Follett, 1918) spark ethical experimentalism and address “grand challenges” (Kistruck & Shantz, 2022) in new ways?

• Engaging and organizing amelioratively: How might incorporating aesthetic, emotional, and embodied dimensions enhance organizational sensemaking, valuation, transformational change, and organizational learning (Elkjaer, 2018) in ways that generate creative organizing practices and solutions in challenging situations?

• Creative re-imagining of leadership: How can collaborative practices enable pluralistic re-imagining of ‘leadership’ that shape organizational futures as inclusive of all stakeholders, human and beyond-human (Gherardi & Laasch, 2021)?

• Managerial issues by pragmatist creative inquiry: How, and to what effect, can managerial tasks, approaches and responsibilities be explored in terms of pragmatist creative inquiry? These include (but not exclusively) innovation management (Dunne & Dougherty, 2016), risk and crisis management (Lorino, 2018), business ethics (Visser, 2019), democracy in work management (Follett, 1942), entrepreneurship development (Morlacchi, 2021)?

• Creative responses to the emergent ethico-onto-epistemological borderlands of organization studies: What does Pragmatism bring to the evolving situation of post-qualitative and ethico-onto-epistemological borderlands and diversity in organization studies (Simpson & Revsbæk, 2022; Revsbæk & Beavan, 2024)?

 
The sub-theme convenors are highly supportive of a hybrid format and believe the challenge of hybrid conferencing suits the call of the sub-theme itself well. Being together-apart, as in hybrid formats, may very well be an increasing mode of participation in future communities seeking to creatively transform challenging situations across different geographic locations. Besides enabling online paper presentations and discussions in hybrid sessions, the sub-theme aims to creatively experiment with hybrid participation by these initiatives:

1. Evocative, experiential sub-theme intro: A collaborative short-performance on hybrid-format communication is experienced as an example of a challenging situation to be creatively transformed. A fictive case of expedition commander Andrea L. Mogensen, Danish astronaut, heading the 2033 International Public-Private exploration of lunar resources for potential commercialization, in communication with ground-based stakeholders, is enacted to disrupt participants’ a priori assumptions about which of the modes of participation (online/on-ground) is the reference point for the other. The intro engages online and on-ground participants in the performance organized by conveners. The shared immersive experience may serve as a point of return in the following sub-theme discussions regarding creatively transforming challenging situations.

2. Online/on-ground reflective dialogues. These will be enabled in three ways during the paper programme to further develop a sense of “community of inquiry”:

• 3-person dialogues across online/on-ground participants, during the opening session and at the closing, at which time participants explore each other’s hopes, insights and reflect on the emergent themes. Online participants are enabled to partake in plenary discussions.
• Mid-point scholarly debate, facilitated by convenors in ways that enable remote participants to engage actively with the discussion of emergent themes.
• Post-EGOS online participation (voluntary), by joining the thriving online community of scholars engaged in Pragmatism in Organization, initiated in 2020 during the submission period of the 37th EGOS Colloquium.

 
This hybrid sub-theme is supported by an experienced group of pragmatist-informed MOS scholars, with contributions from Philippe Lorino, Frithjof Wegener, Katie Beavan, Bente Elkjaer, Anna Rylander Eklund, and Barbara Simpson.
 

References

• Arjaliés, D-L., Lorino, P. and Simpson, B. (2013) Understanding organizational creativity: Insights from pragmatism. In: Kelemen M. and Rumens N. (eds) American Pragmatism and Organization. Issues and Controversies. Dorchester: Gower, 131–145.

• Dewey, J. (1917). The need for a recovery of philosophy. Creative intelligence: Essays in the pragmatic attitude, 1, 3-69.
• Dewey, J. (1934). Art as Experience. Minton: Balch.
• Dunne, D. D., & Dougherty, D. (2016). Abductive reasoning: How innovators navigate in the labyrinth of complex product innovation. Organization Studies, 37(2), 131-159.
• Elkjaer B. (2018) Pragmatism: learning as creative imagination. In: Illeris K. (ed) Contemporary Theories of Learning. Learning Theorists ... In their Own Words. Second Edition. Oxon and New York: Routledge, pp.66-82.
• Follett, M. P. (1924). Creative Experience. New York: Longmans Green.
• Follett, M. P. (1918 [2016]). The New State: Organization in the Solution of Popular Government. Martino Publishing.
• Freeman, R. E., Phillips, R., & Sisodia, R. (2020). Tensions in stakeholder theory. Business & Society, 59(2), 213-231.
• Gherardi, S., & Laasch, O. (2021). Responsible management-as-practice: Mobilizing a posthumanist approach. Journal of Business Ethics, 181(2), 269-281.
• Golden-Biddle, K. (2024, forthcoming). The Untapped Power of Discovery: How to Create Change that Inspires a Better Future. Routledge/Taylor & Francis.
• Golden-Biddle, K. (2020). Discovery as Abductive Mechanism for Reorienting Habits within Organizational Change, Academy of Management Journal (63), pp. 1951-1975.
• Joas, H. (1996). The Creativity of Action. University of Chicago Press.
• Kistruck, G. M., & Slade Shantz, A. (2022). Research on grand challenges: Adopting an abductive experimentation methodology. Organization Studies, 43(9), 1479-1505.
• Lorino, P. (2018). Pragmatism and organization studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Lorino, P., Tricard, B., & Clot, Y. (2011). Research Methods for Non-representational Approaches to Organizational Complexity: the Dialogical Mediated Inquiry. Organization Studies, 32(6), 769-801.
• Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist. (C. W. Morris, Ed.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
• Morlacchi, P. (2021). The Performative Power of Frictions and New Possibilities: Studying power, performativity and process with Follett’s pragmatism. Organization Studies, 42(12), 1863-1883.
• Nguyen, D.C. and Tull, J., 2022. Context and contextualization: The extended case method in qualitative international business research. Journal of World Business, 57(5).
• Revsbæk, L. & Beavan, K. (2024). Togethering situation in diffractive inquiry, Qualitative Inquiry, Online First, 1-13.
• Revsbæk, L. & Simpson, B. (2022). Why does process research require us to notice differently? In B. Simpson and L. Revsbæk (eds), Doing Process Research in Organizations: Noticing Differently (pp. 1-15). Oxford University Press.
• Rylander Eklund, A., Navarro Aguiar, U., & Amacker, A. (2022). Design thinking as sensemaking: Developing a pragmatist theory of practice to (re) introduce sensibility. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 39(1), 24-43.
• Seigfried, C. (1996). Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the social fabric. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
• Simpson, B., & Den Hond, F. (2021). The contemporary resonances of classical pragmatism for studying organization and organizing. Organization Studies, Feb. 1-20.
• Visser, M. (2019). Pragmatism, critical theory and business ethics: Converging lines. Journal of Business Ethics, 156, p. 45-57.
•