Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

The idea that organizational phenomena emerge from and transpire through a nexus of practices and activities is central to a modern practical theoretical sensitivity and is fundamentally linked to the notion that various materials play a crucial role in this process (Carlile et al., 2013; Hui, Schatzki, & Shove, 2017; Leonardi et al., 2012; Engeström, 1987; Orlikowski, 2007; Schatzki, 2005, 2006; de Vaujany & Mitev, 2013). Scholars adopting a practice-theoretical perspective align with several related approaches in social science and human studies that advocate for the inclusion of objects, non-human actants, and materiality in theoretical discussions of social and organizational phenomena.
The renewed interest in the relationship between people, artefacts, and materials, which goes back to the work of the Tavistock Institute (Monteiro et al., 2025; Trist & Bamforth, 1951) have informed a broad variety of studies including work on boundary objects (Carlile, 2002), infrastructure (Star, 1999; Shove & Trentmann, 2018), the materiality of strategizing (Lê & Spee, 2016), the material consequences of technology for work (Leonardi, 2010; Beane & Orlikowski, 2015), the role of artifacts in routines (D’Adderio, 2021), the agentic function of media as materializing interorganizational collaborations (Berglez & Hedenmo, 2025), and the dis-embodiment of financial instruments through time-space compression (Bansal & Knox-Hayes, 2013), among many others.
While a lot has been learned, new contemporary material phenomena, artifacts, and technologies, along with their associated organizing forms, present significant theoretical, methodological, and empirical challenges for practice-theoretical studies of organizing (D’Adderio, 2021). For example, further research is needed to examine the material aspects of digitalization, of which the integration of AI and large language models is just the latest example. Digitalization can lead to profound shifts in work practices and occupations, but it also impacts core institutional values, norms, and rules, indirectly reshaping how organizations and industries operate (Orlikowski & Scott, 2023). The climate crisis and growing ecological awareness compel us to explore new emerging objectual practices—such as repair and reuse (Jarzabkowski & Pinch, 2013)—and the forms of sociality that emerge around them. Similarly, additional work is required to investigate the social life and biography of objects and practices, and how their connections and disconnections influence current politics and the planet's future. The devastating effects of human centrism further encourage us to rethink the relationship between the social and the material from a non-human-centered perspective, which remains dominant in traditional Management and Organizational Studies.
Moreover, these developments challenge the effectiveness and credibility of traditional methodological tools for studying practices, which were mostly developed in the 20th century to examine analog and face-to-face forms of sociality that are increasingly in retreat.
This sub-theme invites contributions that explore different approaches to the material dimension of organizational life understood in practice theoretical terms. It aims to foster robust discussions on how practice-based studies from across different traditions (including, for example, “as practice” approaches such as strategy-as-practice, Bourdieu’s praxeology, sociomateriality, micro ethnography, ethnomethodology, phenomenology, and routine studies) might advance our understanding of the material dimension of organizing in the context of emerging new phenomena and evolving organizational realities.
The unifying framework of the sub-theme is the shared use of practice theories broadly conceived, which provide a common ontology and language for dialogue, critique, and mutual learning. We welcome empirical, methodological, and conceptual papers. Additionally, we encourage submissions that critically engage with the ethical positionality of their studies (Ezzamel & Willmott, 2014). Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following questions:
 

• How do emerging digital technologies reconfigure the material foundations of organizational practices and routines?
• How is generative AI used in organizations? How can this use be conceptualised in practice theoretical terms
• In what ways do digital technologies, objects, or artefacts affect the spatio-temporal arrangement of practices in organizations?
• How do contemporary ecological practices—such as repair, reuse, and circular production—generate new forms of sociality and organizing around material sustainability? How can we foster their diffusion?
• What are the methodological challenges of studying digital, hybrid, or post-human practices using research tools originally designed for analog and face-to-face contexts?
• How do the biographies and social lives of objects influence organizational continuity, transformation, and the politics of production and consumption?
• What would a genuinely non-human-centred approach to organizing look like, and how might it challenge established assumptions in Management and Organizational Studies?
• How do artifacts, technologies, and material infrastructures mediate collaboration, boundary-spanning, and power relations across organizations and industries?
• How are recent technological innovations shaping organizational strategizing?
• How do practices and routines stabilize the material and infrastructural connections that matter for an organization’s work?
• What methodological innovations are needed to better capture the evolving materiality of organizing practices in practice-based research?

References

• Bansal, P., & Knox-Hayes, J. (2013): “The time and space of materiality in organizations and the natural environment.” Organization & Environment, 26(1), 61–82.
• Beane, M., & Orlikowski, W.J. (2015): “What difference does a robot make? The material enactment of distributed coordination.” Organization Science, 26(6), 1553–1573.
• Berglez, P., & Hedenmo, O. (2025): “The mediatedness of interorganizational collaboration. How collaboration materializes through affordances, chains, and switches.” Organization, 32(1), 9-29. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505084231187335.
• Carlile, P. R. (2002): “A pragmatic view of knowledge and boundaries: Boundary objects in new product development.” Organization Science, 13(4), 442-455.
• Carlile, P. R., Nicolini, D., Langley, A., & Tsoukas, H. (eds.) (2013): How matter matters: Objects, artifacts, and materiality in organization studies. Oxford University press.
• D’Adderio, L. (2021): “Materiality and routine dynamics.” In: Feldman, M.S., Pentland, B.T., D’Adderio, L., Dittrich, K., Rerup, C. & Seidl, D. (eds.): Cambridge Handbook of Routine Dynamics. Cambridge University Press, 85–100.
• de Vaujany F-X., Mitev, N. (eds.) (2013): Materiality and Space: Organizations, Artefacts and Practices. Springer.
• Engeström, Y. (1987): Learning by expanding: an activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Orienta-Konsultit.
• Ezzamel, M., & Willmott, H. (2014): “Registering ‘the ethical’ in organization theory formation: Towards the disclosure of an ‘invisible force’.” Organization Studies, 35(7), 1013–1039.
• Gherardi, S. (2019): How to Conduct a Practice-Based Study: Problems and Methods (2nd edition). Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Hui, A., Schatzki, T.R., & Shove, E. (eds.) (2017): The Nexus of Practices: Connections, Con-stellations and Practitioners. Routledge.
• Jarzabkowski, P., & Pinch, T. (2013): “Sociomateriality is ‘the New Black’: accomplishing repurposing, reinscripting and repairing in context.” M@n@gement,16(5), 579-592.
• Jarzabkowski, P., Spee, P., & Smets, M. (2013): “Material artifacts: Practices for doing strategy with ‘stuff’.” European Management Journal, 31(1), 41–54.
• Lê, J., & Spee, P. (2016): “The role of materiality in the practice of strategy.” In: Golsorkhi, D., Rouleau, L., Seidl, D. & Vaara, E. (eds.): Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice. Cambridge University Press, 582–597.
• Leonardi, P. M. (2010): “Digital materiality? How artifacts without matter, matter.” First Monday, 15(6).
• Leonardi, P.M., Nardi, B.A., & Kallinikos, J. (eds.) (2012): Materiality and Organizing: Social Interaction in a Technological World. Oxford University Press.
• Monteiro, P., Nicolini, D., Erickson, I., Cohen, L.E., Dokko, G., Corporaal, G.F., Karunakaran, A., Bechky, B.A. & O’Mahony, S. (2025): “Beyond the buzz: Scholarly approaches to the study of work.” Journal of Management Inquiry, 34(1), 19-40.
• Nicolini, D. (2012): Practice Theory, Work, & Organization: An Introduction. Oxford University Press.
• Orlikowski, W.J. (2007): “Sociomaterial practices: Exploring technology at work.” Organization Studies, 28 (9), 1435–1448.
• Orlikowski, W.J., & Scott, S.V. (2023): “The digital undertow and institutional displacement: A sociomaterial approach.” Organization Theory, 4 (2), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877231180898.
• Reckwitz, A. (2002): “The status of the ‘material’ in theories of culture: From ‘social structure’ to ‘artefacts’.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 32 (2), 195–217.
• Schatzki, T.R. (2002): The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change. Pennsylvania State University Press.
• Schatzki, T.R. (2005): “Peripheral vision: The sites of organizations.” Organization Studies, 26(3), 465–484.
• Schatzki, T.R. (2006): “On organizations as they happen.” Organization Studies, 27(12), 1863–1873.
• Schatzki, T.R. (2010): “Materiality and social life.” Nature and Culture, 5(2), 123–149.
• Schatzki, T.R. (2016): “Keeping track of large phenomena.” Geographische Zeitschrift, 104(1), 4–24.
• Schatzki, T.R. (2019): Social Change in a Material World. Routledge.
• Shove, E. (2017): “Matters of Practice.” In: A. Hui, T. Schatzki & E. Shove (eds.): The Nexus of Practices: Connections, Constellations and Practitioners. Routledge, 155–168.
• Shove, E. & Trentmann, F. (eds.) (2018): Infrastructures in Practice: The Dynamics of Demand in Networked Societies. Routledge.
• Star, S. L. (1999): “The ethnography of infrastructure.” American Behavioral Scientist, 43(3), 377-391.
• Trist, E. L., & Bamforth, K. W. (1951): “Some social and psychological consequences of the longwall method of coal-getting: An examination of the psychological situation and defences of a work group in relation to the social structure and technological content of the work system.” Human Relations, 4(1), 3-38.
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