Program Chair: Michael Jarrett, INSEAD
Co-chair: Jody Hoffer Gittell, Brandeis University
The Organization Development and Change Division (ODC) invites your creative submissions for the scholarly program of the 2024 Annual Meeting. We seek conceptual and empirical papers and symposia relevant to research and practice on organization development and change. We invite submissions from scholars and practitioners at all career stages and using multiple perspectives and methods.
We welcome submissions on any topic relevant to the ODC division’s focus on organizational change and changing. We particularly encourage submissions that align with this year’s AOM theme: “Innovating for the Future.” This theme casts light on the future state of organization. Given unprecedented economic and societal disruption, the rapid pace of technological advancements and AI, and the human costs of negotiated disorder and conflicts, it confronts us to take a fresh perspective on organization, society, and change. The 2024 theme calls for scholarly contributions that question the status quo and reconsider how value is created and distributed among diverse and loosely coupled stakeholders. At the centre of these shifts sits the question: how will management scholars and practitioners unlock creative insights and evidence-based contributions that pave the way for a better future for workers, managers, organizations, and society.
ODC scholars, practitioners, educators, and students are well suited to this moment – as the ODC domain statement demonstrates. The connective tissue of our inquiry is that of change and changing. We explore the strategies, processes, and outcomes of change at individual, group, organization, community, and institutional levels. Our essential values as a division have always linked questions of change with better, healthier, and more equitable futures for individuals, organizations, and communities.
We invite you to consider questions such as the following, adapted and extended, from the call of Tammy Madsen, 2024 AOM Program Chair:
Several questions emerge:
- What is the relationship between policy, purpose, and innovation in organizations and how does it affect value creation and distribution?
- What organizational processes enable (constrain) decision making that integrates all three elements?
- How do multi-stakeholder relationships enable organizations to achieve desired outcomes - such as quality, efficiency, safety, worker well-being and innovation - in times of disruptive change?
- How can structures be redesigned to support and sustain high functioning multi-stakeholder relationships?
- What innovations in organizational policies, processes, and practices can help employees and managers cope with intractable problems while staying true to their purpose?
- How might managers navigate the tensions that arise between their internal sense of purpose and the expectations of external stakeholders?
- What innovations in organizational forms, systems, and micro-processes can help leaders, managers and workers embed concerns about societal issues in day-to-day activities for enduring impact?
- How might organizations and managers create policies (at macro, meta, and micro levels) that strike a balance between regulating the use of emerging technologies and incentivizing innovation that aligns with responsible, purpose-oriented growth?
- What can leaders do to ensure that governing policies related to the use of emerging technologies and the organizational practices associated with their implementation promote inclusion rather than exacerbate inequalities?
- What actions might leaders take to infuse a responsible business mindset into an organization’s culture, practices, policy-making, and innovation activities?
- In what ways can managers and loosely connected stakeholders align incentives and cultivate productive relational arrangements to ensure that co-innovated solutions are developed and utilized in a manner that remains true to purpose-driven objectives?
Submissions to the ODC division may address these - or other topics not necessarily relating to the annual theme - at macro or micro levels of analysis.
Submission Details
To submit to the ODC Division, please review the submission instructions and refer to the section on information for papers and symposia. The submission deadline is 9 January 2024 at 17:00 ET (GMT-5/UTC-5), but earlier submissions are strongly encouraged. Before writing your submission, we also encourage you to review the ODC Division domain and mission statements. Please contact the Program Chair, Michael Jarrett, with any questions about paper submissions and the Co-Chair, Jody Hoffer Gittell, with any questions about symposium proposals.
Awards
If you would like a paper to be considered for an award, please indicate it at the time of submission by making a note on the title as well as in the accompanying email to indicate the award for which you want the paper to be considered. Division Awards will be given for the best paper in the following categories:
- Best Paper Overall
- Rupe Chisholm Best Theory-to-Practice Paper
- Best Paper based on a Dissertation (student must be the sole author)
- Best Student Paper (student must be first author, but paper can be co-authored)
Papers based on a dissertation must be written by students as first author. The Division’s best practical theory paper award goes to a paper presented at the Annual Meeting that demonstrates how theory informs practice and reflective practice enriches concepts and theories. The ODC Division also recognizes a Best Reviewer Award. All award winners will be celebrated at the ODC business meeting, which will be held during the 2024 meeting. Please refer to our awards section for additional detail on all awards.
Finally, we encourage all those submitting to the scholarly program to sign up as reviewers for ODC! We warmly thank all those who contribute to our community and the quality and vibrancy of our program by acting as reviewers for the ODC Division.
Here’s to an exciting AOM 2024. See you in Chicago!