Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Games offer a rich metaphor for exploring how risks are “organized” (Hardy et al., 2020; Jarzabkowski et al., 2025). Grand challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss and corporate processes such as innovation, compliance, and safety practices highlight how successful organizing in the face of novel and unexpected risks often involves game-like dynamics: anticipating moves, adapting strategies, and learning from failure. As in a game, what may seem like a winning strategy can produce unintended consequences or generate new risks, reminding us that risk management must adapt to the situated context in which it unfolds.

Previous research draws attention to the use of games as a metaphor in at least three ways. First, the influential work by Power and others draws attention to a new risk game in organizational processes since the late 1990s (Power, 2007, 2016; Power et al., 2009): a style of internal control-focused risk management that intensifies attention to defensive compliance. The game metaphor foregrounds what may be called symbolic or secondary risk management, where the goal is not necessarily to reduce risk but to appear risk-aware. In such a context, the “risk game” may become a “blame game,” where the “players” adjust their moves based on anticipated gains and threats (Hood, 2002).

Second, risk management can be gamified through simulations, role-plays, and scenario analyses—as demonstrated in studies on strategy, resilience, crisis management, and organizational preparedness for nature-related challenges such as climate change (e.g., Cartel et al., 2019). Research also shows that games, which deliberately introduce obstacles so players fail, learn, and try again, help individuals understand how to take risks and learn from mistakes even beyond the gaming context (Colbert et al., 2016). Therefore, traditional risk-management processes, tools, and metrics can be gamified to foster employee engagement and sustain attention on risk.

Third, extending the metaphor further, games can illuminate the politics of play. Butler (2009), for example, reminds us that vulnerability to risk is both universal and unevenly distributed, as not all “risk subjects” (Hardy & Maguire, 2020) are equally positioned to “play” risk games. For example, supposed derisking pension strategies displace risks away from organizations and toward individuals who are often less equipped to “win” risk games (Kaifala et al., 2021). Governance frameworks for climate and nature-related risks, such as those concerning corporates’ dependency on and impact on natural resources, may marginalize civil society organizations that engage with nature differently or lack access to dominant data infrastructures (Nyberg & Wright, 2016).

The streams of literature briefly reviewed above suggest that studying how risks are organized through the lens of games reveals how creativity, improvisation, and strategic play can serve both as sources of risk management solutions and as generators of novel risks. Risk games may serve symbolic and ritualistic functions, reinforcing appearances of control and accountability. Gamifying risks through simulation, role-plays, and scenario analysis can open new avenues for engaging with uncertainty and complexity. The politics of play highlights how game-like dynamics are increasingly politically relevant as organizations and societies grapple with existential challenges such as climate change, pandemics, Artificial Intelligence developments, and geopolitical instability.

Against this backdrop, the EGOS theme “The Games We Play: Re-Writing the Rules of Organization?” offers a platform for scholars to revisit key themes in the study of risk and organizing risk. It invites reflection on how organizations balance innovation, risk taking, and control; how they navigate compliance and defensible accountability; and how power and politics shape risk management frameworks and processes. An organizing risk perspective, in turn, can enrich the metaphor of games by foregrounding not only winning strategies but also the structural and institutional conditions and rules of play that shape organizational life.

Our sub-theme “Risk Games, Gamifying Risk, and the Politics of Play” invites contributions that explore empirically, theoretically, and critically the role of games in organizing risk, and that examine how creative and strategic engagements with risk unfold across different domains and timeframes. As risk cuts across disciplinary boundaries, we particularly welcome papers that draw on diverse perspectives—from organization theory, strategy, sociology, and accounting to social studies of finance, science, and technology—to deepen our understanding of the complex relationship between risk, vulnerability, compliance, creativity, and organizing. More specifically, we invite contributions that explore risk in and around organizations in terms of the overall EGOS Colloquium themes, as shown in the indicative research questions listed below.

Risk games:

• What practices and frameworks are used to organize risk, and how do these vary across sectors or institutional settings? How are different “risk games” played?

• When does the risk game become a blame game, and how do actors shift responsibility in response to perceived threats or failures?

• In what ways do risk games reinforce exclusionary logics, such as categorizing individuals or groups in ways that affect their life chances?

 
Gamifying risk:

• How do organizations use techniques such as scenario analysis, role-playing, and simulations to engage with complex, systemic, or novel risks?

• What are the implications of simulation-based approaches for alternative epistemologies, such as local ecological knowledge or community-based practices?

• In what ways do gamified practices reproduce narrow conceptions of risk and responsibility?

• What ethical considerations arise when risk is gamified in contexts of extreme vulnerability or existential threat?

 
Politics of play:

• Who defines the rules of play in risk management, and how?

• How do organizations engage with risk in contexts such as forced migration, climate crisis, or modern slavery?

• What does organizing risk reveal about the politics of vulnerability?

• What role do metrics, classifications, and data infrastructures play in shaping the “rules of play” in how risk is organized and governed?

• What strategic moves are available to marginalized actors, and how do they resist or subvert dominant risk narratives?
   

• Butler, J. (2009). Frames of war: When is life grievable? Verso Books.
• Cartel, M., Boxenbaum, E., & Aggeri, F. (2019). Just for fun! How experimental spaces stimulate innovation in institutionalized fields. Organization Studies, 40(1), 65–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617736937
• Colbert, A., Yee, N., & George, G. (2016). From the editors: The digital workforce and the workplace of the future. Academy of Management Journal, 59(3), 731–739. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2016.4003
• 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. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2017.0987
• 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), 1032–1066. https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2018.0110
• Hood, C. (2002). The risk game and the blame game. Government and Opposition, 37(1), 15–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/1477-7053.00085
• Jarzabkowski, P., Unger, C., & Meissner, K. (2025). Valuing what you risk and risking what you value: Advancing a research agenda for risk studies. Organization Studies, 46(1), 121–139. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241290038
• Kaifala, G. B., Paisey, C., & Paisey, N. J. (2021). The UK pensions landscape – A critique of the role of accountants and accounting technologies in the treatment of social and societal risks. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 75, Article 102091. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2019.06.005
• Nyberg, D., & Wright, C. (2016). Performative and political: Corporate constructions of climate change risk. Organization, 23(5), 617–638. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508415572038
• Power, M. (2007). Organized uncertainty: Designing a world of risk management. Oxford University Press.
• Power, M. (Ed.) (2016). Riskwork: Essays on the organizational life of risk management. Oxford University Press.
• Power, M., Scheytt, T., Soin, K., & Sahlin, K. (2009). Reputational risk as a logic of organizing in late modernity. Organization Studies, 30(2–3), 301–324. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840608101482