Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

In an age where artificial intelligence and digital infrastructures are transforming the conditions of work, what does it mean to be human at work? As emerging technologies increasingly mediate (and sometimes replace) social interaction, while taking over tasks related to decision-making, coordination, control, and creativity, organizations become arenas where the rules of humanness are rewritten (Bankins et al., 2024; Tegmark, 2017). Is there still room to be a human in the modern workplace?

This sub-theme explores how digital technologies transform the very game of organizing: the players, the rules, and the ways the “teams” are constituted and how they interact. The rise of algorithmic management, generative AI, and gamified platforms has not only introduced new tools of coordination and surveillance (Zuboff, 2019); it has also blurred the boundaries between play and work, autonomy and control, human and machine. Are we still setting the rules for the game of work, or being played by systems that compute, anticipate, and steer human behavior? And how do these shifts reshape not only individuals but also the collective life of organizations, altering how groups form, negotiate meaning, and exercise power together? How do we sustain the quintessentially human qualities of empathy, creativity, sense of community, compassion, and care (e.g., Dutton et al., 2014) in spaces where proximity, embodiment, and serendipitous encounters have been reconfigured?

Traditional organizational life was once grounded in face-to-face human interaction; one arrived at the office every morning to be in close proximity with one’s colleagues, who formed one’s own team and tribe. Yet, as hybrid and remote work arrangements proliferate, the rules of interaction are increasingly embedded in code, platforms, and algorithms (Taskin et al., 2024). Digital infrastructures are taking over increasingly relational and cognitive tasks (from recruitment and performance appraisal to leadership and collaboration, cf. Kellogg et al., 2020), thereby redefining human resource management (Budhwar et al., 2023; Kim et al., 2025), while also augmenting, and sometimes eroding, quintessentially human qualities. They also reshape the collective dimension of work: communities are now assembled, fragmented, or sustained through digital devices and platforms, where norms of participation, visibility, and recognition are algorithmically configured rather than mutually negotiated.

Building on insights from sociomateriality (Orlikowski & Scott, 2008), we view humanness not as an essence, but as a relational and performative accomplishment—something played out in the everyday encounters within sociomaterial networks composed of  humans, algorithmic or digital devices, and organizations (cf. Berg, 2025). Such networks highlight that humanness emerges not only in human-technology interactions but also through the ways groups appropriate, reshape, or resist technological scripts.

Humans have a deep need to belong and feel cared for (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Deci & Ryan, 2000), while finding meaning from being able to contribute and positively impact the lives of others (Allan et al., 2018; Martela et al., 2021). However, care and belonging in the workplace are often tightly bound to instrumentality (Alvehus & Vie, 2025). In the worst case, new digitalized work arrangements make the workplace inhumane, devoid of the qualities that make us more than mere tools: care, belonging, shared excitement, creativity, and critical reflectivity. Moreover, they change the preconditions for leadership and organizational politics (Alvehus & Klitmøller, 2024) on a microlevel, simultaneously raising classical questions about power and ownership: who decides how technologies are deployed, who benefits from the productivity gains they generate, and how digital infrastructures potentially shift the lines of conflict between labor and capital as compared to traditional industrial settings (e.g., Burawoy, 1979). However, the new technologies can also open up new possibilities to express humanness at work (Galière, 2021), in the best case freeing humans from repetitive, inhumane tasks to focus on tasks where their humanness can best shine (Bankins & Formosa, 2023).

We invite papers that explore the ambiguities, paradoxes, and creative potential of humanness as it is played out in technologically mediated worlds of work.

We welcome conceptual, empirical, and methodological contributions that address questions such as:

• How is humanness performed, scripted, or simulated in remote and hybrid work settings? What does it mean to “act human” in algorithmically mediated interactions?

• How do communities, teams, and collectives shape, and become shaped by, the technological infrastructures through which they collaborate?

• How are empathy, solidarity, and collaboration enacted when interactions are dispersed, asynchronous, and mediated by platforms?

• How is a sense of belonging and a sense of community hindered and enhanced by the affordances provided by various digital and technological platforms and solutions?

• How do digital traces, status indicators, or AI analytics redefine what counts as presence, effort, or belonging?

• How do workers, leaders, and algorithms co-construct new rules of the game—bending, hacking, or resisting the systems that seek to manage them?

• How do these changes redefine leadership and how the managers can best lead humanness at work?

• How does algorithmic delegation of managerial tasks reconfigure authority, care, and the capacity to lead humanely?

• Can digital infrastructures foster new forms of relationality, solidarity, or care, or do they erode the social and emotional fabric of work?

• Can new technologies become key parts of social dynamics and form sociotechnical selves?

• What do these changes mean for human resource management, and what new opportunities and challenges do they give rise to for HR professionals?

• Who sets the rules of play in organizations mediated by opaque algorithms? How do new digital tools reshape the balance of power and authority within the organization? What forms of inequality, bias, or exclusion do these systems reproduce?

• How can we design remote and algorithmic systems that nurture, rather than erode, humanness—fostering meaningful work, care, collective agency, and connection?

• We welcome also other topics at the intersection of humanness, human connection, digitalization, and emerging technologies.

• ​Allan, B. A., Duffy, R. D., & Collisson, B. (2018). Helping others increases meaningful work: Evidence from three experiments. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 65(2), 155–165.
• Alvehus, J., & Klitmøller, A. (2024). Leadership, power, and politics. In D. Knights, O. Smolović Jones, H. Liu, & S. Wilson (Eds.), Routledge critical companion to leadership studies (pp. 67–79). Routledge.
• Alvehus, J., & Vie, O. E. (2025). “It serves more than one purpose”: Pastoral power and the instrumentality of caring leadership. Organization Studies. Advance online publication.
• Bankins, S., & Formosa, P. (2023). The ethical implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for meaningful work. Journal of Business Ethics, 185(4), 725–740.
• Bankins, S., Ocampo, A. C., Marrone, M., Restubog, S. L. D., & Woo, S. E. (2024). A multilevel review of artificial intelligence in organizations: Implications for organizational behavior research and practice. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 45(2), 159–182.
• Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529.
• Berg, M. (2025). From Mead to machine: Conversational choreographies with ChatGPT and the emergence of the socio-technical self in generative AI. In S-L. S. Chen (Ed.), Studies in symbolic interaction (Vol. 64): Symbolic interaction and AI. Emerald.
• Budhwar, P., Chowdhury, S., Wood, G., Aguinis, H., Bamber, G. J., Beltran, J. R., Boselie, P., Lee Cooke, F., Decker, S., DeNisi, A., Dey, … Varma, A. (2023). Human resource management in the age of generative artificial intelligence: Perspectives and research directions on ChatGPT. Human Resource Management Journal, 33(3), 606–659.
• Burawoy, M. (1979). Manufacturing consent: Changes in the labor process under monopoly capitalism. The University of Chicago Press.
• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268.
• Dutton, J. E., Workman, K. M., & Hardin, A. E. (2014). Compassion at work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, 277–304.
• Galière, S. (2021). Toward an empowering instrumentation of digital platforms: An Airbnb Experience case study. RIMHE: Revue Interdisciplinaire Management, Homme & Entreprise, 1043(2), 27–52.
• Kellogg, K. C., Valentine, M. A., & Christin, A. (2020). Algorithms at work: The new contested terrain of control. Academy of Management Annals, 14(1), 366–410.
• Kim, S., Khoreva, V., & Vaiman, V. (2025). Strategic human resource management in the era of algorithmic technologies: Key insights and future research agenda. Human Resource Management, 64(2), 447–464.
• Martela, F., Gómez, M., Unanue, W., Araya, S., Bravo, D., & Espejo, A. (2021). What makes work meaningful? Longitudinal evidence for the importance of autonomy and beneficence for meaningful work. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 131, Article 103631.
• Orlikowski, W. J., & Scott, S. V. (2008). Sociomateriality: Challenging the separation of technology, work and organization. Academy of Management Annals, 2(1), 433–474.
• Taskin, L., Klinksiek, I., & Ajzen, M. (2024). Re‐humanising management through co‐presence: Lessons from enforced telework during the second wave of Covid‐19. New Technology, Work and Employment, 39(1), 143–167.
• Tegmark, M. (2017). Life 3.0: Being human in the age of artificial intelligence. Knopf.
• Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism. PublicAffairs.