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Sub-theme 49: Magic, Mysteries, and Illusions in Organizational Games and Play: Methods, Technologies and Practices

Convenors:
Stefan Schwarzkopf
Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Elena Giovannoni
University of Birmingham, UK
Paolo Quattrone
University of Manchester, UK

Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Magic and play are more than a competitive game. While a lot has been written about games and the role of gamification in neoliberal organizing (Jagoda, 2020), the mysterious, dangerous, and illusory playfulness of organizational magic requires much more scholarly attention. Magic and play bring enchantment back to organizations and organizing, and to their agents, with the pleasure of being part of the play, and the illusion that playing affords. Significantly, the Latin word for play—ludo—is indissolubly tied to illusion, which means “in-play” (in ludo), and is semantically and etymologically linked to “alludo [allude], colludo [collude], illudo [illude] all [of which] point in the direction of the unreal, the illusory” (Huizinga, 2016 [1949], p. 36).

Magic and play remind us that the modern era is still driven by the mysterious functioning of markets for hidden objects (Backsell & Schwarzkopf, 2023), by magical thinking (Letiche et al., 2020; Young et al., 2013), by belief in the power of magical concepts that promise organizational transformation (Pollitt & Hupe, 2010), management’s enchantment (Gimpl & Dakin, 1984), corporate wizards (Zald & Lounsbury, 2010), corporate devils (Siebert et al., 2017), witchcraft (Cucchi et al., 2022), magical agents in modern garb (Skovgaard-Smith & Hearst, 2023), financial rituals (Gambling, 1987), by the playful functioning of new technologies and calculative practices (Gardner, 2014; Mastrolia et al., 2014), artificial intelligence (Sharkey & Sharkey, 2006), mysterious currencies (Lee, 2022; Muniesa, 2024), and by digital dashboards and business analytics (Obadia, 2022). Markets and organizations are replete with invisibilities (of tricks) and ignorance (of explanation) (Quattrone et al., 2021; Schwarzkopf, 2020), with mysteries that resist revelation (Da Silva et al., 2022), unknowability (Giovannoni & Quattrone, 2005), and the hope for alternative solutions beyond reasoning (Bennett, 2001), like the hope for speed and technologies (see Eco, 2002). Magic and play are concepts that bring into view an enchanted world of the irrational and wonder, even “awe” (Williams & Shepherd, 2025), a world where playing with numbers and technologies opens up to unprecedented innovation and imagination. Recent historical research suggests that magical practices were at the origins of a number of modern management practices, including accounting, operations management, and advertising (Rosenberg, 2023; Zieger, 2025). This suggests opportunities for organization scholars to turn play, magic, and the conjuring trick into conceptual tools for exploring the mystery of organizing and institutions without revealing it.

This sub-theme will provide a space for organization scholars interested in innovating their research approaches by integrating clearly delineated concepts of magic, mystery, and play. Our aim is to discuss and develop state-of-the-art theorizing of the multiple organizational expressions of all things “illusory” (in-ludo = in play) in areas such as organizational strategy, accounting, marketing, finance, entrepreneurship, business model innovation and change management, organizational learning and decision-making, digitalization, and management ethics.

We welcome theoretical, empirical, and methodological studies addressing questions including but not limited to:

  • How do organizational magic and play actually work? What are the “tricks” and the magic rituals that underpin mundane organizing, and how do they enchant organizational life?

  • What are the methods for exploring magic and play in organizing? For example, what can contemporary organizations and management scholars learn from classical sociological and anthropological studies of magic (Marcel Mauss, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Mary Douglas, Paul Radin, and others)?    

  • What is the role of technologies, algorithms, and calculations in magic games and play for organizing?

  • How can magic and play lead us into mysteries, absences, and invisibilities in organizations? How do they become part of the play(s) we are acting out?

  • What is the relationship between the instrumentally rational (outcome-oriented, communicable, visible) aspects of magic, and magic’s undeniable irrational and even spiritual sides?

  • Who are the organizational magicians and “tricksters”? Are there professional groups that require and produce genuine (“white”) magic—rather than confidence tricks or overtly criminal acts—in order to create legitimacy for themselves?

  • What is the role of “magic concepts” in organizations and organizing? 

  • How can historical research into the origins of modern organization and management practices and thought recover the magical elements that lay at its beginnings and that became gradually repressed over time?

We are interested in submissions from different disciplinary perspectives and methodological traditions that directly address or speak to the points above, exploring challenges and opportunities for innovative approaches to organizations and organizing, through the mysteries, magic, and illusions of organizational play and games.


References
  • Ahrne, G., & Brunsson, N. (2008). Meta-organizations. Edward Elgar.
  • Backsell, J. I., & Schwarzkopf, S. (2023). Hiding in plain sight: Organizational magic as a contested process of revelation and concealment. Organization Studies, 44(8), 1259–1280.
  • Bennett, J. (2001). The enchantment of modern life: Attachments, crossings, and ethics. Princeton University Press.
  • Bento da Silva, J., Quattrone, P., & Llewellyn, N. (2022). Turning to mystery in institutional theory: The Jesuit spiritual exercises. Organization Studies, 43(9), 1379–1400.
  • Cucchi, C., Lubberink, R., Dentoni, D., & Gartner, W. B. (2022). ‘That’s witchcraft’: Community entrepreneuring as a process of navigating intra-community tensions through spiritual practices. Organization Studies, 43(2), 179–201.
  • Gardner, M. (2014). Mathematics, magic and mystery. Courier Corporation.
  • Gimpl, M. L., & Dakin, S. R. (1984). Management and magic. California Management Review, 27(1), 125–136.
  • Giovannoni, E., & Quattrone, P. (2025). Nothing is right in individual and collective action: Placing unknowability at the heart of theorizing through rhetoric. Organization Theory, 6(3), Article 26317877251366658.
  • Huizinga, J. (2016). Homo ludens: A study of the play-element in culture. Angelico Press. (Original work published 1949)
  • Jagoda, P. (2020). Experimental games: Critique, play, and design in the age of gamification. University of Chicago Press.
  • Lee, S. C. (2022). Magical capitalism, gambler subjects: South Korea’s bitcoin investment frenzy. Cultural Studies, 36(1), 96–119.
  • Letiche, H., Linstead, S., & Moriceau, J.-L. (2020). The magic of organization. Edward Elgar.
  • Mastrolia, S. A., Zielonka, P., & McGoun, E. G. (2014). Conjuring a reality: The magic of the practice of accounting. Management and Business Administration. Central Europe, 22(3), 3–17.
  • Muniesa, F. (2024). Paranoid finance. Polity.
  • Obadia, L. (2022). (Online) spelling the (digital) spell: Talking about magic in the digital revolution. Sophia, 61(1), 23–40.
  • Pollitt, C., & Hupe, P. (2011). The role of magic concepts. Public Management Review, 13(5), 641–658.
  • Quattrone, P., Ronzani, M., Jancsary, D., & Höllerer, M. A. (2021). Beyond the visible, the material and the performative: Shifting perspectives on the visual in organization studies. Organization Studies, 42(8), 1197–1218.
  • Rosenberg, A. (2023). Fears of enchantment: Advertising theory in Britain and the making of a modern myth. Cultural History, 12(1), 44–72.
  • Schwarzkopf, S. (2020). Sacred excess: Organizational ignorance in an age of toxic data. Organization Studies, 41(2), 197–217.
  • Sharkey, N., & Sharkey, A. (2006). Artificial intelligence and natural magic. Artificial Intelligence Review, 25(1), 9–19.
  • Siebert, S., Wilson, F., & Hamilton, J. R. (2017). “Devils may sit here:” The role of enchantment in institutional maintenance. Academy of Management Journal, 60(4), 1607–1632.
  • Skovgaard-Smith, I., & Hirst, A. (2023). Marcel Mauss and the magical agents of our time. Journal of Classical Sociology, 24(2), 171–185.
  • Williams, T. A., & Shepherd, D. A. (2025). Awe-driven venturing: Identifying and pursuing transformational opportunities. Academy of Management Review. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2023.0247
  • Young, M. J., Morris, M. W., & Scherwin, V. M. (2013). Managerial mystique: Magical thinking in judgments of managers’ vision, charisma, and magnetism. Journal of Management, 39(4), 1044–1061.
  • Zald, M. N., & Lounsbury, M. (2010). The wizards of Oz: Towards an institutional approach to elites, expertise and command posts. Organization Studies, 31(7), 963–996.
  • Zieger, S. (2025). Houdini and the magic of logistics. Journal of Cultural Economy. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2025.2471601



Stefan Schwarzkopf is Associate Professor at the Department of Business Humanities and Law at Copenhagen Business School. His research is concerned with organizational magic, organizational mysteries, and the relevance of theological concepts for economic sociology and organization studies. His current research projects focus on the geopolitical imaginary of progressive social groups (millenarianism), and on the moral pitfalls of the circular economy. His research has appeared amongst others in 'Organization Studies', 'Organization', 'Journal of Business Ethics', 'Environment & Planning D', 'Theory, Culture & Society', and 'Journal of Cultural Economy'. He is a regular EGOS attendant, the co-organizer of the 2026 Organization Studies Method/ology Development Workshop, and has organized the 5th Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop at CBS in 2018.
Elena Giovannoni is Professor of Accounting at Birmingham Business School, UK, where she is the head of the Accounting Department. Her work bridges critical and historical perspectives and methods for researching calculative practices and organizing, at the intersection of materiality, space and time, also in relation to unknowability and the magical. She has published her research in accounting journals and in organization studies, and she has co-edited a handbook on historical methods for management. She serves on several Editorial/Review Boards, and as Senior Editor for 'Organization Studies'.
Paolo Quattrone is Professor of Accounting, Governance and Society at the Alliance Manchester Business School, and visiting positions at Copenhagen Business School, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and the Stockholm School of Economics. He is a regular at EGOS, member of the EGOS conference local organizing committee at Edinburgh in 2018, organizer of a sub-theme at EGOS in Vienna, and former Editor-in-Chief of 'Organization Studies'. He is interested in how the visible and the invisible, absences, no-things, ambiguity, mystery and the unknowable create performable spaces in decision-making, organizing, data visualizations, governance and the persistence of institutions.