Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Within management and organization studies (MOS) there is a well-established tradition of drawing on fictional narratives (i.e., film, television, and literature) to understand, shed light on, or indeed think differently about, the realities of organizational life. Fiction also holds the power to challenge established social structures. For example, in his seminal work “The Organization Man” (1956), William H. Whyte devotes a whole section to tracing different ideologies of organizational life and consequences for organizational workers beyond organizational boundaries through fictional works. Fictional accounts have been used to theorize gendered norms and experiences in and around organizations (Griffin et al., 2017) as well as gendered norms playing out in the production of specific genre fiction itself (Alacovska, 2017). The genre of Science Fiction provides a powerful means to interrogate the present status of organizations as well as providing a blueprint for future world-making (Alacovska, 2025; Smith et al., 2003). It provides readers with novel ideas of possible future worlds by inventing futures and anchoring characters in a specific time and place, thus functioning as a laboratory of the imagination (Jameson, 2005). Hence, while there is no longer any “special originality” to be claimed by contemporary organization scholars drawing upon fictional resources (De Cock, 2000, p. 589), there seems to be untapped potential in drawing on fiction as a unique way of confronting the grand societal challenges as well as the unique mundanities of contemporary organizational life in the 21st century.

In line with the overall theme of the 43rd EGOS colloquium, fiction provides a useful way of understanding the underlying structure of the games we play in everyday (organizational) life. Iain Banks (1990), for example, elaborates how he uses “games as symbols of the way we react to one another and to society” in his novels. He goes on to outline that “a game is like a novel—it’s a set of rules and symbols and patterns.” Walter Benjamin (2008) used film as an example of how technology expands the individual’s “Spielraum” (their scope for play as well as their field of action). This imagined space of Spielraum as facilitated by film enables a reorganization of the self in the world, expanding the imagination. Benjamin further discusses the role of art in rehearsing the interplay between humanity and nature with the intention to cultivate a new relationship of playful interaction with the world rather than one of mere control. Playing with this notion of “playful interaction,” we believe there is also untapped potential in the use of fiction as a tool for research engagement as well as management education (e.g., Ivanova et al., 2026). For example, William H. Whyte (1956) describes ways of using fictional works to stipulate reflections on moral decision making in organizational systems.

Contemporary societal challenges seem to particularly call for a playful and creative approach in organization studies and management education. First, boundaries between fiction and fact are increasingly blurred with the dissolution of truth and emergence of alternative facts in public discourses, the proverbial “post-truth era” (i.e., Knight & Tsoukas, 2019). As Meyer (2025) recently suggested: “We are no longer disputing opinions, prioritizations of values, the legitimacy of interests, or the applicability of logics, but we are disputing what happened, not in distant history but yesterday, last week. What is at stake is trust in the reality of everyday reality” (p. 875). What does this mean for how scholars theorize with fiction (e.g., Beverungen & Dunne, 2007; Rhodes & Brown, 2005), or for conceptualizations of organizations themselves as fiction (e.g., Savage et al., 2018)? Second, with technological advances such as AI introducing fundamental changes to organizational work, it is the playful and creative capabilities of human actors that are key to adjusting to and preserving the value of human capital and that offer unique opportunities to create organizational futures (Heracleous & Jacobs, 2011).

We are interested in how fiction functions as a window into organizations and organizing; how it illuminates hidden aspects of organizational life, refracts them through familiar genres and tropes, and invites audiences to identify with, distance from, or critically reflect on organizational roles and narratives. We, therefore, invite contributions that examine how playing with fiction may open up new ways of understanding organizations and organizing—playing with fiction as research context, engagement strategy, educational resource; playing as drawing on existing fictional works and/or encouraging the creating of fictional works as part of arts-inspired teaching and engagement strategies. In short, work that treats fiction as data, as method, and as interlocutor: analyzing cultural artifacts and practices, using them in research and teaching, and engaging with them as partners in theorizing. To this end, we invite submissions engaging with (but not limited to) the following themes:

• How can fictional narratives (literary and genre fiction) enhance our understanding of current societal challenges (e.g., Cli-Fi, satire)? What previously neglected genres have the potential to reinvigorate our understanding or thinking in relation to particular phenomena, and organizational life more broadly?

• What are the contemporary methodological opportunities/dilemmas when treating fictional narratives as data? How could fiction inform new ontologies and epistemologies in MOS research? In what ways can MOS scholars methodologically innovate with fiction in a world where boundaries between fact and fiction are increasingly blurred?

• What can organizational scholars learn from studying the producers and/or production of fictional narratives?  For example, authors and their role as observers of social life, as informal ethnographers and/or researchers, as drivers of social change or stasis.

• How do entrepreneurs, especially in the tech world, mobilize literary and cinematic tropes to persuade us to see the nonexistent technologies they are developing as viable and desirable (viz. Alacovska, 2025)—the idea of “prefiguration”?

• How can we trace changes in contemporary organizational and societal ideologies (e.g., regarding the changing nature of work and careers, or moral implications for organizational heroes in confronting climate and social challenges) through fictional narratives?

• How has AI been imagined in literature and film? What “wish images” do these provide and with what consequences (e.g., the dominant narratives of techno-solutionism and techno-dystopias)? What specifically are the connections with “play”? For example, Powers (2024, p. 308) suggested in his novel Playground: “Games now ruled humanity… And it made perfect sense to me that the machines that would doom us cut their teeth by watching humans play.”

• How can MOS scholars draw on fiction as a form of creative play in their teaching (e.g., learning from stories and learner-own created stories)—and/or research dissemination and engagement? What is the pedagogical value of fiction? How can fiction foster more impactful research?
   

• Alacovska, A. (2017). The gendering power of genres: How female Scandinavian crime fiction writers experience professional authorship. Organization, 24(3), 377–396. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508416687766
• Alacovska, A. (2025). Sci-fi capital and humanoid robotics: Conjuring the speculative value of not-yet-existing technologies. Sociology, 60(3), 686–704. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380385251380978
• Banks, I. (1990). In conversation with Michael Cobley. Science Fiction Eye, 2(6). https://iainbanks.co.uk/banks-statements-interviews/michael-cobley-science-fiction-eye-1990/
• Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility. In M. W. Jennings, B. Doherty, & T. Y. Levin (Eds.), The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, and other writings on media (pp. 19–55). Harvard University Press.
• Beverungen, A., & Dunne, S. (2007). I’d prefer not to: Bartleby and the excesses of interpretation. Culture and Organization, 13(2), 171–183. https://doi.org/10.1080/14759550701299941
• De Cock, C. (2000). Reflections on fiction, representation, and organization studies: An essay with special reference to the work of Jorge Luis Borges. Organization Studies, 21(3), 589–609. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840600213005
• Griffin, M., Harding, N., & Learmonth, M. (2017). Whistle while you work? Disney animation, organizational readiness and gendered subjugation. Organization Studies, 38(7), 869–894. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840616663245
• Heracleous, L., & Jacobs, C. (2011). Crafting strategy: Embodied metaphors in practice. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975516
• Ivanova, E., Rimanoczy, I., & Singhal, D. (2026). The power of arts-based pedagogies: Transforming mindsets to shape our future. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003666325
• Jameson, F. (2005). Archaeologies of the future: The desire called utopia and other science fictions. Verso.
• Knight, E., & Tsoukas, H. (2019). When fiction trumps truth: What “post-truth” and “alternative facts” mean for management studies. Organization Studies, 40(2), 183–197. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840618814557
• Meyer, R. (2025). Wicked crises and the (in)capacity to act. Administrative Science Quarterly, 70(4), 867–883. https://doi.org/10.1177/00018392251363998
• Powers, R. (2024). Playground: A novel. Random House Canada.
• Rhodes, C., & Brown, A. D. (2005). Writing responsibly: Narrative fiction and organization studies. Organization, 12(4), 467–491. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508405052757
• Savage, P., Cornelissen, J., & Franck, H. (2018). Fiction and organization studies. Organization Studies, 39(7), 975–994. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617709309
• Smith, W., Higgins, M., Parker, M., & Lightfoot, G. (2003). Science fiction and organization. Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203401989
• Whyte, W. H. (1956). The organization man. Simon & Schuster.