Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Pragmatist philosophy remains a relatively untapped source of inspiration for organizational scholarship. It was developed in response to the social, political, and economic crises of the late 1800s and early 1900s (Menand, 2003) and has inspired work that seeks to understand and address contemporary crises in organizations and societies—whether small, big, or grand (Adler, 2019; Farjoun et al., 2015; Ferraro et al., 2015; Lorino, 2018; Simpson, 2024; Simpson & den Hond, 2022). Core Pragmatist concepts have been mobilized to this aim of understanding and addressing crises; we can think of abduction, creativity, democracy, education, experience, habit, inquiry, signification, transaction, and others. “Play” is another core concept, one that has not yet been sufficiently drawn upon, although it seems indispensable: in and of itself, through its potential to connect other core pragmatist concepts, and arguably in relation to crises. The sub-theme seeks to explore the role of play in understanding and addressing crises, big and small. It playfully asks: Can we play, seriously, in and with crises? 

Play and games—as pleasure, spontaneity, and chance (paidia), in their associations with rule-following, competing, and fighting (ludus), and in the paradoxical combination of autotelic or purpose-driven activity (as, e.g., in “serious play”)—are central to human life (Caillois, 1958; Huizinga, 1955; Statler et al., 2011). Indeed, play and games are intimate to Pragmatist thinking. For instance, Mead (1934) argues that both are fundamental to social and cognitive development. Addams (1902/2002) makes human playfulness in its multiple manifestations central in cultivating democracy and education. Dewey (1916/1980) rejects the opposition between play and work as a fallacy, highlighting the imaginative attitude associated with play. Peirce (1903/1998) argues for the importance of “pure play” or “musement” as a method of abduction. For all of them, a concern for play—whether autotelic or purpose-driven, whether leaning to paidia or to ludus, or seen as constitutive of culture—is not a mere addendum to pragmatist thinking. Rather, it emerges organically as a natural extension of characteristic pragmatist concerns.

Playing, the “lively exercise of one’s powers” (Peirce, 1908/1998, p. 436), playfulness, musing, even if it “has no purpose, unless recreation” (ibid.) are at the heart of creativity and abduction, in the sense that they may unexpectedly result in an unsought inventive response to a problematic situation, a new approach to a lingering issue (Sætre & Van de Ven, 2021). Indeed, novelty does not always come easily, and systematic effort may not suffice to find “the way of integration” (Follett, 1924), the third way that escapes both an impotent compromise and domination by the more powerful force or party (Contu, 2019). The point is that play can be a “performative power” (Morlacchi, 2021).

Pragmatists view play also as central to the cultivation of democracy, not so much as a system of governance but rather as a form of dynamic human association (Addams, 1902/2002; Dewey, 1927/1980). This spirit motivates efforts to make organizations congenial to democratic values by making them relational and deliberative (Selznick, 1992). And yet, democracy is never guaranteed, never a settled matter—it flows from a “Pascalian wager” (West, 1993, p. 140) that is “predicated on a working faith in the possibilities of who we can become” (Glaude, 2011, p. 120). This project could hardly be timelier given political, cultural, and economic shifts challenging various institutions and organizations (Ansell, 2011; Frega, 2019). For instance, recent developments in the global economy present empirical and conceptual puzzles for stakeholder theory (e.g., Chowdhury, 2026), a tradition with pragmatist foundations (Pouryousefi & Freeman, 2021; Wicks & Freeman, 1998): Who plays the game(s) of organization? Who is invited to participate? And are the rules designed such that all players are equal (the game is “clean”), or do they encourage bad-faith maneuvers (the game is “dirty”)?

In this spirit, we welcome submissions that might explore, for instance, some of the following questions:

• How and why can pragmatism help us to interpret and engage with crises, whether “big” (e.g., political polarization, climate, inequality) or “small” (workplace conflict, meaningful work)?
• How can play be brought into abductive theorizing, methods, and research practices?
• How can we reimagine management learning and education drawing on a pragmatist understanding of play?
• What are the continuities between work and play? How do they make a difference that matters for a world in crisis?

According to pragmatists, these and other questions cannot be addressed from the sidelines. Individuals, organizations, and societies learn effective responses to challenges, grand and small, by experience and experimenting with different habits to bring about desirable change (Farjoun et al., 2015). Experimentation should be, and often is, playful, not formulaic or predetermined, for better and worse (Vesa et al., 2019). To find new paths forward, people must have the freedom to creatively exercise their imagination. Moreover, for Addams (1902/2002), most of our problems are due to a lack of imagination which prevents the realization of the experience of other people, and play has potential as a community activity to maintain the power of experimentation in other realms and with it the possibility of reimagining life during times of crisis.

In sum, we envision a forum where we seek to explore pragmatist perspectives and ideas on the role of play in understanding and addressing contemporary crises, big and small.
 

• Addams, J. (1902/2002). Democracy and social ethics. University of Illinois Press.
• Adler, P. S. (2019). The 99 percent economy. Oxford University Press.
• Ansell, C. (2011). Pragmatist democracy. Oxford University Press.
• Caillois, R. (1958). Man, play and games. University of Illinois Press.
• Chowdhury, R. (2026). Marginalized stakeholder theory: A normative foundation for decolonization. Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-026-06269-w
• Contu, A. (2019). Conflict and organization studies. Organization Studies, 40(10), 1445–1462. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617747916
• Dewey, J. (1916/1980). Democracy and education. In J. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey: The middle works, 1899–1924 (Vol. 9). Southern Illinois University Press.
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• Follett, M. P. (1924). Creative experience. Longmans, Green and Company.
• Frega, R. (2019). Pragmatism and the wide view of democracy. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Glaude, E. S. (2011). On prophecy and critical intelligence. American Journal of Theology & Philosophy, 32(2), 105–121. https://doi.org/10.2307/27944541
• Huizinga, J. (1955). Homo ludens: A study of the play element in culture. Beacon Press.
• Lorino, P. (2018). Pragmatism and organization studies. Oxford University Press.
• Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society. 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. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406211031729
• Peirce, C. S. (1903/1998). Pragmatism as the logic of abduction (Lecture VII). In The Peirce Edition Project (Ed.), The essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings (Vol. 2, 1893–1913, pp. 226–241). Indiana University Press.
• Peirce, C. S. (1908/1998). A neglected argument for the reality of God. In The Peirce Edition Project (Ed.), The essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings (Vol. 2, 1893–1913, pp. 434–450). Indiana University Press.
• Pouryousefi, S., & Freeman, R. E. (2021). The promise of pragmatism: Richard Rorty and business ethics. Business Ethics Quarterly, 31(4), 572–599. https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2021.6
• Sætre, A. S., & Van de Ven, A. (2021). Generating theory by abduction. Academy of Management Review, 46(4), 684–701. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2019.0233
• Selznick, P. (1992). The moral commonwealth: Social theory and the promise of community. University of California Press.
• Simpson, B. (2024). Diffracting collaborative leadership: A pragmatist project. Oxford University Press.
• Simpson, B., & den Hond, F. (2022). The contemporary resonances of classical pragmatism for studying organization and organizing. Organization Studies, 43(1), 127–146. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840621991689
• Statler, M., Heracleous, L., & Jacobs, C. D. (2011). Serious play as a practice of paradox. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 47(2), 236–256. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886311398453
• Vesa, M., den Hond, F., & Harviainen, J. T. (2019). On the possibility of a paratelic initiation of organizational wrongdoing. Journal of Business Ethics, 160, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-3852-z
• West, C. (1993). Keeping faith: Philosophy and race in America. Routledge.
• Wicks, A. C., & Freeman, R. E. (1998). Organization studies and the new pragmatism: Positivism, anti-positivism, and the search for ethics. Organization Science, 9(2), 123–140. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.9.2.123