Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

With the advent of reusable rockets, outer space has evolved from a peripheral frontier to a scalable platform, transforming the organizational playbook of space travel in terms of coordination, innovation, and power (Heitor et al., 2024; Weinzierl, 2018). With respect to Earth’s orbit, these changes have resulted in lower access barriers for research and startups but also accelerated the militarization and commercialization of space by governmental and corporate actors vying for dominance (Parrella et al., 2022). These developments now also feed into a renewed interest in colonizing transplanetary space beyond Earth’s orbit, ranging from the merely ambitious, such as ESA building a permanent space transportation infrastructure (FLPP), to the outright science-fictional, including SpaceX’s mission of colonizing Mars.

Indeed, as this new space race is rewriting many of the rules of the game, it recreates some existing organizational challenges while creating new ones (Mirmalek, 2009). The rapid proliferation of satellites contributes to global communication and climate monitoring, but also to orbital congestion and space debris (Klimburg-Witjes et al., 2025). Likewise, the age of “Old Space,” coordinated by governmental initiatives, is making way for an emerging “New Space” economy (Fuchs et al., 2024) marked by decentralized, loosely coordinated innovation ecosystems and private capital in search of new business opportunities, be it asteroid mining or space tourism (Gonzalez, 2023). The evolution of relationships between space actors remains uncertain, as they navigate a complex (astro)scape of competition and cooperation (Moltz, 2024). This raises fundamental questions about orchestrating radically complex organizational ecosystems as well as the legitimacy and accountability of corporate-state partnerships building future (trans)planetary infrastructures (Di Tullio et al., 2024).

Furthermore, space offers an extreme research setting for studying organization(s) at the limits. This begins on the ground, where organizations, such as space agencies, need to build and maintain the capabilities to design and operate equipment (satellites, space stations, deep space probes) robust enough to withstand the harshest of conditions (Berente et al., 2016). Even more so when it comes to human space travel, organizing for and in space foregrounds the precarity and limits of human-machine entanglement (Mazmanian et al., 2014). In this purview, organization studies may need to revisit a variety of theoretical assumptions, such as organizational reliability and resilience (Farjoun & Starbuck, 2007). By the same token, outer space also confronts us with our epistemological limits of the unknown, unknowable, and absent (Giovannoni & Quattrone, 2018; Kornberger & Clegg, 2004), as it presents the ultimate “final frontier” of organization (O’Doherty et al., 2013).

In light of these epistemological limits, space travel has always been linked to future imaginaries and organizational practices of future-making (Pettit et al., 2023; Thompson & Byrne, 2022). Hence, this sub-theme also foregrounds the power of fiction, in particular science fiction, structuring cultural expectations and organizing visions (Parker et al., 1999; Savage et al., 2018). However, as these narratives are increasingly co-opted by corporate hegemons (Holm Vohnsen, 2024), this new space race has been criticized as nothing more than a continuation of the political economy of extraction and colonization (Di Tullio & Rea, 2024; Kendal, 2024). Importantly, this political economy of space does not only take effect somewhere “out there” but is also intimately connected to what is happening “down here,” as it deepens its gaze at planet Earth and interplanetary space alike (Grana et al., 2024). Taken together, these developments showcase that organizing for and in space is not about leaving but expanding the world into a transplanetary ecology, requiring an ethico-politics of care for a (post)human future (Andersson, 2024; Márton & Ens, 2025).

This sub-theme will provide a forum for assembling the diverse and scattered organizational research on space travel in the broadest sense. The aim is to engage organizational scholars to exchange research findings, develop an overview of the state-of-the-art of organizational space studies, and explore possibilities for future research agendas and collaborations. Space as a topic of organization studies invites us to revisit established as well as develop new organizational concepts.

In this spirit, we welcome theoretical, empirical, and methodological studies addressing questions including but not limited to:

• What are the challenges and opportunities for organizational space studies in theoretical, methodological, and empirical terms?

• What are the similarities and differences between studying orbital and transplanetary space?

• What ontologies and epistemologies are helpful to further organizational space studies?

• What are the ethical, political, societal, technological, physical, cultural, historical, and so forth entanglements that are characteristic, if not particular, for space-related organization(s)?

• How can the (post)human future in space be studied, especially in connection with the humanities and natural sciences?

• How can the interdependencies between space and Earth be conceptualized and made fruitful for organization studies?

• How can organizational space studies contribute to organization studies more broadly?

We are interested in covering the broad spectrum of organizational space research that speaks to the above themes and issues, exploring avenues for furthering our understanding of the old and new space age.
 

• Andersson, J. (2024). Between responsibility and escape: The future as an object of knowledge in the humanities and social sciences. European Journal of Social Theory, 27(2), 174–190. https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241227866
• Berente, N., Lyytinen, K., Yoo, Y., & King, J. L. (2016). Routines as shock absorbers during organizational transformation: Integration, control, and NASA’s enterprise information system. Organization Science, 27(3), 551–572. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2016.1046
• Di Tullio, P., La Torre, M., Antonio Rea, M., Guthrie, J., & Dumay, J. (2024). Beyond the planetary boundaries: Exploring pluralistic accountability in the new space age. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 37(5), 1283–1311. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-08-2022-6003
• Di Tullio, P., & Rea, M. A. (2024). The dark side of the new space economy: Insights from the sustainability reporting practices of government space agencies and private space companies. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 31(5), 4651–4672. https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2825.
• Farjoun, M., & Starbuck, W. H. (2007). Organizing at and beyond the limits. Organization Studies, 28(4), 541–566. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840607076584
• Fuchs, S. H., Vorley, T., & Ventresca, M. J. (2024). A primer to new space business - Beyond “Business in space: The new frontier” (Goodrich, Kitmacher and Amtey, 1987) Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 22, Article e00493. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbvi.2024.e00493
• Giovannoni, E., & Quattrone, P. (2018). The materiality of absence: Organizing and the case of the incomplete cathedral. Organization Studies, 39(7), 849–871. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617708005
• Gonzalez, S. (2023). The Astropreneurial co-creation of the new space economy. Space Policy, 64, Article 101552. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spacepol.2023.101552
• Grana, F., Achilli, G., Giovannoni, E., & Busco, C. (2024). Towards a future-oriented accountability: Accounting for the future through Earth observation data. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 37(5), 1487–1511. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-12-2022-6175
• Heitor, M., Pina e Cunha, M., Clegg, S., & Sirage Pedro Oliveira, E. (2024). Beyond new space: Changing organizational forms, collaborative innovation and public and semi-public domains. Space Policy, 68, Article 101609. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spacepol.2023.101609
• Holm Vohnsen, N. (2024). Corporate utopias: The tech elite’s visions and the global crises of democratic problem-solving. Journal of Business Anthropology, 13(2), 79–101. https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v13i2.7141
• Kendal, E. (2024). Asteroid mining vs the carbon bubble: Ethical considerations for space resource extraction. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 37(5), 1345–1375. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-12-2022-6186
• Klimburg-Witjes, N., Strycker, K., & Braun, V. (2025). Who cares for space debris? Conflicting logics of security and sustainability in space situational awareness practices. Science and Engineering Ethics, 31(5), Article 28. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-025-00550-3
• Kornberger, M., & Clegg, S. R. (2004). Bringing space back in: Organizing the generative building. Organization Studies, 25(7), 1095–1114. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840604046312
• Márton, A., & Ens, N. (2025). In contamination: Disturbance ecology and organization studies. Organization Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406251381044
• Mazmanian, M., Cohn, M., & Dourish, P. (2014). Dynamic reconfiguration in planetary exploration. MIS Quarterly, 38(3), 831–848. https://doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2014/38.3.09
• Mirmalek, Z. (2009). Dreaming of space, imagining membership: The work conduct of heroes. Management & Organizational History, 4(3), 299–315. https://doi.org/10.1177/1744935909337753
• Moltz, J. C. (2024). Crowded orbits: Conflict and cooperation in space. Columbia University Press.
• O’Doherty, D., De Cock, C., Rehn, A., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2013). New sites/sights: Exploring the white spaces of organization. Organization Studies, 34(10), 1427–1444. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840613499654
• Parker, M., Higgins, M., Lightfoot, G., & Smith, W. (1999). Amazing tales: Organization studies as science fiction. Organization, 6(4), 579–590. https://doi.org/10.1177/135050849964001
• Parrella, R. M., Spirito, G., Cirina, C., & Falvella, M. C. (2022). The new space economy and new business models. New Space, 10(4), 291–297. https://doi.org/10.1089/space.2021.0020
• Pettit, K. L., Balogun, J., & Bennett, M. (2023). Transforming visions into actions: Strategic change as a future-making process. Organization Studies, 44(11), 1775–1799. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406231171889
• Savage, P., Cornelissen, J. P., & Franck, H. (2018). Fiction and organization studies. Organization Studies, 39(7), 975–994. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617709309
• Thompson, N. A., & Byrne, O. (2022). Imagining futures: Theorizing the practical knowledge of future-making. Organization Studies, 43(2), 247–268. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406211053222
• Weinzierl, M. (2018). Space, the final economic frontier. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 32(2), 173–192. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.32.2.173