Thursday, February 12, 2009

Call for Papers: Understanding Organizations in Complex, Uncertain and Emergent Environments

Asia Pacific Researchers in Organtization Studies (APROS)
Call for Papers APROS 2009,
Understanding Organizations in Complex, Emergent and Uncertain Environments
Monterrey, Mexico (December 6 - 9, 2009).

Call for Papers

Nascent concepts based on cultural hybridism, salient stakeholders, new humanism and pragmatism are emerging for theory building in management and organization studies. These new strands have particular relevance for studies of organizations in emergent economies because of the traditional management practices and organizational arrangements in these contexts, which have some degree of divergence from more rationalist assumptions and models. There are notable common themes across organizations in developing countries or transition economies, based on contexts of localism, traditionalism and patrimonial organization. Today, these economies are undergoing the ‘shock of the new’ as both externally sourced FDI and internally liberalizing economies opens them to wider rationalizations of modernity already institutionalized in the dominant global economies and societies. In this conference, we seek to build a coherent understanding of changes occurring in these organizations in these complex, emergent, and uncertain environments.

APROS 2009 welcomes novel theoretical frameworks and innovative research strategies in management and organization studies. We seek to understand today's distinct environment of economic, political and social instability, the role of enterprises as social institutions, the value of the individual within society, and the pragmatic character of governmental public policies, which require novel interdisciplinary views.

We also seek to move from a traditional research approach, which offers universalistic solutions that provide only partial understanding of organizations operating in these complex environments. We encourage submission of studies that could contribute to our understanding of the cultural hybridization process.

In emerging economies it is important to understand indigenous stakeholders’ demands, and singular stakeholders lacking in legitimacy or power, that might not exist in more ‘advanced’ societies.

We suggest perspectives founded on a new humanism and pragmatism to build our proposed novel theoretical approach.

• By new humanism we mean an approach that balances the individual and economic perspectives of organizations. In Latin America, the individual is valued as part of the collectivity: how typical is this of other emergent economies? How is the individual valued in specific emergent economies? How could we include diverse practices for developing human and social capital simultaneously?
• By pragmatism we refer to the view of “what is possible” in Latin America given the environmental complexity in which organizations have to function. If a pragmatic humanism can focus on the reality of Latin America’s political economy, what about other regions such as Asia, the Middle East, Western, Central and Eastern Europe?

The APROS 2009 conference seeks to develop knowledge from international, grounded, theoretical, case study, and ethnographic research strategies for understanding management and organizations in times of disorder. While we note the usefulness of existing general management theories being applied as functional universals to diverse regions, these theories need to be enriched with concepts or terms that are unique to environments with unstable structural characteristics because of their singular historical and cultural development.

Papers in any theoretical or substantive areas may be submitted to the organizing committee, care of: catya.martinez@itesm.mx
Conference Streams:
  • • Accountability
  • • Embedded Cultural Models and Indigenous Practices: An Aesthetic Approach to a New Leadership Framework
  • • Hybridity & Power in Management and Organization Studies: The Post-colonial Reading Re-read • Strategy and Change: Living with Maps, Masks and Mirrors!
  • • Exploring the Complexities of Corporate Social Responsibility
  • • Organisational Coaching – Expressing New Organizational Forms, or Masking Old Management Practices?• Integrating Leadership and Governance in Complex, Emergent and Uncertain Environments
  • • The Rhythm of Organizing: Moving Bodies, Moving Organizations• Organizing Work in the Knowledge Economy
  • • Labyrinths of ‘Otherness’: Alternative Voices, Visual Accounts and Artistic Representations of Organizational Selves
  • • Managers and Management in Complex Environments Divergence, Convergence and Hybrids• Increasing Practical and Humanistic Approaches to Small Business Success through eCollaboration
  • • Sustaining Sustainability: Maintaining Balance
  • • Cultural Hybridization, Organizational Technologies, and Processes in Developing Countries
  • • Organizational Crime

Important Dates

Deadline for abstract (800 words) submission: March 31, 2009
Answer by the organizing committee and stream chair on acceptance or rejection of abstract: April 30, 2009
Deadline for Full Paper Submission: September 30, 2009

Anabella Davila, Ph. D.Professor of Organization Theory,
Director, Ph. D. in Business Administration and Management Program
Graduate School of Business Administration and Leadership,
Tecnologico de Monterrey,
Campus Monterrey,
Ph. +52-81-8625-6150
Fax. +52-81-8625-6098
Intercampus Connection 80-343-6150,
http://egade.itesm.mx/http://itesm.mx/

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