Call for Papers

This sub-theme is the first edition of the new EGOS Standing Working Group (SWG) 09 on “Organizing as Practice: Advancing Novel Practice-Theoretical Insights in Organization Studies”, which provides a platform applying and developing innovative practice-theoretical approaches to understanding organizational phenomena. Practice-theoretical approaches offer a particularly suitable perspective for studying organizing processes, their complex dynamics in real-life settings and the emergence of new organizational phenomena (Bourdieu, 1977; Giddens, 1984; Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina & Savigny, 2001). So far, practice-based scholarship has developed in different sub-communities; the SWG 09 seeks to provide a lasting platform to foster conversations across these sub-communities and to collectively advance practice-based approaches in organization studies.
 
This sub-theme will attend to how actors seek to address and engage with large social phenomena (for short: large phenomena). Large phenomena include, but are not limited to, grand societal challenges such as climate change, healthcare, digitalization, peace and economic development, financial stability as well as large historical phenomena such as capitalism, managerialism, consumerism, societal inequalities, and workplace in-justice. Such phenomena stretch across contextual boundaries (e.g., economic, environmental, social, and technological), and actors (e.g., individuals, organizations, governments) and often involve orchestrating resources and people into action (see Howard-Grenville et al., 2016). Drawing on these ideas, practices are relevant in the constitution, change and emergence of large phenomena. Engaging with large phenomena requires organising across boundaries and seeking connections between multiple practices through boundary objects, boundary spanners, or developing new boundary-crossing practices. Responding to problems associated with large phenomena typically requires coordinated responses at the inter-organizational and institutional levels (Jarzabkowski et al., 2019). The need for such a coordinated response may seem obvious for actors seeking to address complex problems, but their plans typically compete against other initiatives and thus need to be sold internally to gain legitimacy and resources (Lauche, 2019).
 
The study of practices has increasingly demonstrated that what happens in, across, and around organizations has profound effects on societal outcomes that are significant in scope (Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011). There are already various examples of practice-theoretical studies that have focused on the constitution, change and emergence of large phenomena; for example, studies on reinsurance markets (Jarzabkowski et al., 2015a), project networks (Windeler & Sydow, 2001), organizational path dependence (Sydow et al., 2009), inter-organizational networks (Berthod et al., 2017), ecologies of discourses (Seidl, 2007), change of institutional fields (Seidl et al., 2021), the coordination of occupational communities and governance structures (Ackermann et al., 2023), and multi-stakeholder initiatives (Couture et al., 2023).
 
Conversely, if practices can help us understand and deal with large phenomena, large phenomena can also better enable us to explore issues central to practice theory, such as how practice change occurs within, through and around organizations (Nicolini, 2012; Gehman et al., 2013). Large phenomena also raise questions about the implications of organizational rigidity and innovation for wider social change, since practices are enacted in different local, spatial, and temporal dimensions (Glaser et al., 2021).
 
We invite empirical, practice-theoretical studies of the constitution, emergence and change of large phenomena as well as reflections and developments of new methodological approaches (see Nicolini & Giustini, 2024), theoretical perspectives (Seidl & Whittington, 2014) and concepts for studying large phenomena. By sharing emerging insights from different empirical contexts, we seek to advance our theoretical vocabularies across our different sub-communities and to build research strategies and methodological resources to provide new ways to understand and intervene in large phenomena. At the same time, we aim to understand the reciprocal relationship between the study of large phenomena and the advancement of practice-based scholarship in organization studies.
 
Questions that may be addressed include, but are not limited to, the following:

• How can a practice perspective help us to understand the specific challenges that actors encounter who seek to address large phenomena?

• How do actors create momentum and access resources for addressing large scale phenomena?

• How are practices that span organizational boundaries initiated, maintained, negotiated and transformed over time?

• How do intra-organizational and inter-organizational practices interact in productive ways?

• How can we study the doings and sayings of multiple actors in multiple organizations and locations?

• How do practices configure and how are they (re-)configured in light of large phenomena such as grand challenges?

• How do organizations adapt their practices over time and space in light of large challenges?

• How do dynamics of large phenomena come about?

References

• Ackermann, F., Pyrko, I., & Hill, G. (2023): “Mobilizing landscapes of practice to address grand challenges.” Human Relations, 77 (5), 593–621.

• Berthod, O., Grothe-Hammer, M., & Sydow, J. (2017): “Network ethnography: A mixed-method approach for the study of practices in interorganizational settings.” Organizational Research Methods, 20 (2), 299–323.
• Couture, F., Jarzabkowski, P., & Lê, J.K. (2023): “Triggers, traps, and disconnect: How governance obstacles hinder progress on grand challenges.” Academy of Management Journal, 66 (6), 1651–1680.
• Deken, F., Berends, H., Lauche, K., & Gemser, G. (2018): “Strategizing and the initiation of interorganizational collaboration through prospective resourcing.” Academy of Management Journal, 61 (5), 1920–1950.
• Feldman, M.S., & Orlikowski, W.J. (2011): “Practicing Theory and Theorizing Practice.” Organization Science, 22 (5), 1240–1253.
• Gehman, J., Trevino, L.K., & Garud, R. (2013): “Values Work: A Process Study of the Emergence and Performance of Organizational Values Practices.” Academy of Management Journal, 56 (1), 84–112.
• Glaser, V.L., Pollock, N., & D’Adderio, L. (2021): “The Biography of an Algorithm. Performing algorithmic technologies in organizations.” Organization Theory, 2 (2), https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877211004609.
• Jarzabkowski, P., Bednarek, R., & Spee, P. (2015a): Making a Market for Acts of God: The Practice of Risk-Trading in the Global Re-insurance Industry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Jarzabkowski, P., Bednarek, R., & Cabantous, L. (2015b): “Conducting global team-based ethnography: Methodological challenges and practical methods.” Human Relations, 68 (1), 3–33.
• Jarzabkowski, P., Bednarek, R., Chalkias, K., & Cacciatori, E. (2019): “Exploring inter-organizational paradoxes: Methodological lessons from a study of a grand challenge.” Strategic Organization, 17 (1), 120–132.
• Lauche, K. (2019): “Insider activists pursuing an agenda for change: Selling the need for collaboration.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 64, 119–138.
• Nicolini, D. (2012): Practice Theory, Work, & Organization: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Nicolini, D., & Giustini, D. (2024): “Die Anwendung der Praxistheorie in der ethnografischen Arbeit [How to use practice theory in ethnographic work].” In: Budde, J., Rißler, G., Meier-Sternberg, M., & Wischmann, A. (eds.): What’s New? Neue Perspektiven in ethnographischer Erziehungswissenschaft. Leverkusen: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 15–35.
• Seidl, D. (2007): “General strategy concepts and the ecology of strategy discourses: A systemic-discursive perspective.” Organization Studies, 28 (2), 197–218.
• Seidl, D., Ohlson, T., & Whittington, R. (2021): “Restless Practices as Drivers of Purposive Institutional Change.” In: Lounsbury, M., Anderson, D.A., & Spee, P. (eds.): On Practice and Institution. Theorizing the Interface, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 70. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 187–207.
• Seidl, D., & Whittington, R. (2014): “Enlarging the strategy-as-practice research agenda: Towards taller and flatter ontologies.” Organization Studies, 35 (10), 1407–1421.
• Sydow, J., Schreyögg, G., & Koch, J. (2009): “Organizational path dependence: Opening the black box.” Academy of Management Review, 34 (4), 689–709.
• Windeler, A., & Sydow, J. (2001): “Project networks and changing industry practices collaborative content production in the German television industry.” Organization Studies, 22 (6), 1035–1060.
•