Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

As the description of the forthcoming 43^rd EGOS Colloquium in Liverpool has it, work in organizations can be described as being “played as a game.” It requires continuous learning of its changing rules and nature, as well as virtues and good sportsmanship. In the turbulent sociopolitical, ecological, and financial environment, powerful actors strive to recreate the “rules of the game.” This calls for good judgement about what is good and what is bad. Additionally, technological change, such as that driven by AI, requires learning about technology and assessing whether its use is ethical and morally sound. Meanwhile, the knowledge people act upon when undertaking skilled action at the workplace, even when basic or noncomplex skills are used, is always in the making, situated in particular contexts, involving mind, body, and the use of tools. As pragmatist and process philosophers have long argued, novelty is embedded even in the most mundane activities. To use knowledge is to exercise judgement. In this sub-theme, we invite the broadly understood and inclusive scholarly community interested in management learning and education to explore these contemporary concerns.

While setting out to understand good judgement, we must also reflect on what judgement is and what it means for organizational life. In the recent integrative review, Tsoukas et al. (2024, p. 627)define judgement as “an individual’s assessment, estimation, and inference of relationships (current or future ones) among objects, options, entities, or actions.” Drawing on Dewey’s (1934)conception of aesthetic experience, Bell (1999, p. lxiv) argues that “judgement arises from the self-conscious use of the prefix re: the desire to re-order, to re-arrange, to re-design what one knows and thus create new angles of vision or new knowledge for scientific or aesthetic purposes.” And, as Tsoukas and Vladimirou (2001, p. 121)noted, “the self-conscious desire to rearrange what one knows implies that the individual wishes to see things differently, to disclose aspects of a phenomenon that were hitherto invisible, or simply to see more clearly than before.”

The exercise of judgement involves two things. First, it involves the embeddedness of an individual within a collective domain of action—a “form of life” (Wittgenstein, 1958),a “practice” (MacIntyre, 2007; Nicolini, 2011), or a “horizon of meaning” (Gadamer, 1989). Second, it involves learning since to judge—and to create new knowledge—individuals need to draw on “already constituted distinctions” (i.e., bodies of knowledge), “concerning a task at hand” (Tsoukas, 2009, p. 941). If to know is to judge, to judge is to draw new distinctions from old ones.

Moreover, Tsoukas et al. (2024, p. 644) distinguish a particular perspective on judgement called wisdom—akin to Aristotelian “phronesis” or “practical judgement.” They observe that, within this particular perspective, “judgement is, for the most part, a holistic and habitually trained intuitive process. Judgement is seen as evaluating while acting in vivo and in situ.” The wisdom/phronesis perspective appears particularly fruitful for this sub-theme, because it emphasizes how people learn about the changing world around them while making judgements with their “entire selves” and as part of the unfolding course of action (Contu, 2023). This has been seen in such studies as the examination of the complex judgements made by middle managers in Disneyland who opposed the company’s strategic direction (Bardon et al., 2017), the judgements of the newly appointed CEO dealing with the sexual harassment complaints in their organization (Shotter & Tsoukas, 2014), how entrepreneurs learn to make judgements that are not only dominated by their personal values (Clarke & Holt, 2010), as well as the importance of practical judgement in delivering higher education (Antonacopoulou, 2010; Śliwa & Cairns, 2009).

The insights gained from these studies on judgement as wisdom are that good judgement is not something pregiven—it has to be learned in a social context and with respect to others. The “judge” is not separate from the situation being judged, but is immersed in the context they need to learn about in order to understand it. Judgement in this sense has a moral dimension, because its exercise often involves showing commitment and taking responsibility for those affected by that judgement. And because good judgement is embodied, reliant on senses, and situated in the context, it cannot be learned merely through the transfer of propositional, codified knowledge—but instead, it has to be discovered by indwelling in the practices one is involved in on a day-to-day basis (Hadjimichael et al., 2024). It is this discovery of good judgement in the fast-changing world that often erodes the existing “rules of the game,” which makes it a challenge for contemporary societies, organizations—including universities and business schools—and educators.

Our general question for this sub-theme is: how can people in organizations learn to judge the “right” course of action, or what not to do? Scholars interested in management learning have explored this theme from different perspectives and attended to various phenomena, including the role of one’s character in making judgements (Crossan et al., 2023), the ability to improvise under challenging circumstances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Hadjimichael & Tsoukas, 2023), the challenge of the “good” use of generative AI in organizations and education (Barros et al., 2023; Larson et al., 2024), the impact of human nature on practices and their good purpose (Bernacchio & Sinnicks, 2025), or making judgements to address grand societal challenges of our times (Ackermann et al., 2024). Ultimately, it is not sufficient to learn, but also to understand its purpose and how it can translate into eudaimonia—the good life for the community and society (Tsoukas, 2018).

The intention behind this sub-theme is to initiate a conversation about “Learning Good Judgements” across different epistemic communities broadly interested in management learning, including scholars interested in both organizational and educational contexts (Prasad & Śliwa, 2022). This way, we aim at the big picture for management learning and education, which spans across socioeconomic conditions, culture, postcolonialism, courageous action, as well as the learning of groups and individuals, among other topics (Lindebaum, 2024, 2025). Hence, the proposed inclusive sub-theme can be a good place for bringing together scholars specialized in different strands of management learning, business ethics, gender and critical management, technology, organizations, and education.

Consequently, we propose the following sub-questions for this sub-theme to consider:

• What does it mean to exercise good judgement in a world riddled with polarization, inequalities, fast-paced technological change, and political conflict? What is a “good judgement” and how does it steer us away from bad outcomes?

• How can management/organizational learning and education support the exercise of good judgement in organizations?

• What are the new developments in management/organizational learning and education studies that help organizations understand good judgement?

• What, in particular, is the role of business schools in shaping understandings of what good judgment is, and in facilitating students’ ability to exercise good judgment?

• What is the role of business ethics in guiding organizations to learn about good judgement? To this end, how are values and morality intertwined with the processes of exercising judgement?

• How do critical approaches, including those informed by feminist and intersectional perspectives, illuminate the challenges and power relations that underpin the framing of what good judgment is, and how it can be learned, in contemporary organizational or educational environments?

• How do new technologies, especially large language models and social media developments, inform, constrain, or distract good judgment in organizations?

• How is individual practical wisdom related to organizational learning and collective reasoning?

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