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Organization Science Winter Conference 2026
Call for Submissions
Deadline: November 1st, 2025
Studying Work, Doing Work: The Purpose and Practice of Organization Science
February 23 - 25, 2026
ESCP Business School, Paris
"All theories of organizing are at least implicitly limited to some concrete activities they purport to describe and explain. In most instances these activities are what people call work."
Barley and Kunda 2001, p. 76.
Our knowledge of organizations is constituted through work and through our understandings of work. Twenty-five years since the call to "bring work back in," workers and their activities are increasingly central to theories of organizing. The 2026 Organization Science Winter Conference brings together scholars who examine how the organization and accomplishment of work relate to interactional processes, workplace experiences, institutional dynamics, and technological change. We also invite reflections on the work of doing organizational research in a time of rapid and significant technological and institutional change. The conference encourages submission of original research that investigates how work and workers inform organization science theory and practice, while also inviting reflections about how the changing conditions of academic labor are transforming the work of organization science and its implications for the future of our field. We welcome research employing a range of methodological approaches across global contexts, and from both contemporary and historical perspectives.
Illustrative but not exhaustive topics of research to be included in the conference are:
● Organizing Jobs, Roles and Tasks: Jobs, roles, and tasks are the building blocks of organizational life but how they are structured, differentiated, and connected varies widely across settings and over time. We invite research that examines how organizations allocate tasks, define roles, and construct or contest occupational boundaries. How is work parceled out, combined, or coordinated? How do organizational, technological, and institutional forces shape job structures and task assignments and with what consequences? We especially welcome studies that illuminate the everyday practices, tensions, and negotiations through which jobs and roles are enacted, maintained, or transformed. We encourage papers addressing these questions at any level of analysis (individual, team, and/or organizational).
● The Dynamics of Collaboration and Interaction: Through daily interactions and acts of collaboration workers accomplish organizational goals. Understanding these accomplishments depends on studies the behaviors and processes of collaboration, communication, conflict resolution, coordination, routines, and role systems as the means through which knowledge, expertise, and skill are integrated and orchestrated in workplaces. We invite research that examines how work is enacted by individuals and teams within organizations as well as across organizations. Going beyond well-studied settings, we especially encourage attention to remote and hybrid work, work in the public sector, and work in the global south.
● The Evolving Experience of Work: How work impacts the experience of workers offers interesting questions as the nature of work is changing. How technologies, structures, processes, policies, and routines impact the day-to-day experience of workers, including among different worker groups, pose important questions for the study of organizations. We invite research that looks at how the worker experience is shaped by the organization context, especially in ways which impact the ultimate success and viability of organizations themselves.
● Markets, Institutions, and Intermediaries: Work is embedded in and influenced by the institutional and market contexts in which it unfolds. Markets, whether labor, capital or product, define the demand for skills, drive firm strategy, as well as impact wages and working conditions. Institutions, including legal frameworks, welfare systems, along with educational and training structures, provide norms and rules that govern employment relationships, worker protections and access to opportunities. Intermediaries such as financial institutions, platforms, labor market agencies, certification bodies, trade unions and professional associations mediate access to opportunities, resources, and recognition. We invite research that examines how these forces affect how work is organized, valued, and transformed across different institutional environments and market systems. This includes studies of how platforms and intermediaries impact the structure, meaning, and experience of work. How do they affect access to work, the distribution of rewards, or the construction of legitimacy and expertise? How do financial or legal changes alter job design? How do institutional logics and market pressures jointly influence organizational responses to new forms of labor, employment, and organizing? We welcome work that illuminates the macro–micro linkages through which work is constructed and contested.
● Emerging Technologies: As new technologies spanning artificial intelligence, quantum computing, blockchain, and immersive platforms (AR/VR) take root in the workplace, organizations face complex decisions about adaptation, timing, and strategic response. How do emerging technologies reshape work, organizing, innovation, and expertise? We invite research that explores how technologies transform work practices and innovation processes, as well as work that examines the temporal dynamics and the complex processes through which organizations adapt to, resist, or actively shape emerging technological landscapes. This includes how emerging technologies are restructuring task allocation and coordination in digitally-mediated work environments and reshaping innovation ecosystems, R&D, and team partnerships.
● Work as Strategy: People have always been core to the design and execution of firm strategy, from boundary of the firm questions such as M&A to the role of culture, operations, executive decision-making, human capital, delegation and control, incentive design, and innovation. As the strategy field has grown to embrace the study of people, there are new opportunities to understand the complementarities between policies around people and the other activities and design decisions of the firm.
● The Work of Organization Science in a Changing World: Researchers in the field of organization science have access to a growing range of technologies, empirical settings, and data sources that may change both how we do research and what we study. At the same time universities are under threat, the authority of expertise in societal matters is contested, and managers and firms' demands for new knowledge about organization science are evolving. Research that considers how changing technological and social contexts are transforming the resources and roles of organization scientists across the world is welcome.
Submission Process for the Conference
We aim to include a broad range of scholars conducting research related to the theme across micro, meso, and macro-organizational traditions. We invite 3- to 5-page paper contributions inclusive of references, figures, and tables. The program will be a mix of plenary sessions and
the highly acclaimed OSWC evening poster session. We can guarantee only one participant per paper/poster. 50% of the OSWC participation slots are reserved for participants new to the conference (have not attended in the previous three years). The program committee will allocate successful submissions to either panel or poster sessions.
Please submit your proposals here. November 1st , 2025 is the deadline for submissions. Invitations to attend will be extended by the program committee by December 1st , 2025. Details on registration and hotels will be shared at that time. If you have any questions, please email huising@essec.edu.
Submission Process for the Doctoral Consortium (morning of February 23rd)
The Consortium will prioritize mid to late-stage doctoral students and aim to provide feedback on the most developed paper from their PhD research. The consortium will include 30 doctoral students, who will have the chance to discuss their work and engage in interactive sessions with peers and senior faculty. Preference will be given to single-authored papers. In the spirit of inclusion, we cannot guarantee participation for more than one student per institution. In such cases, we will prioritize advanced students and may ask programs to provide a priority ranking.
Please submit a CV and a 3-5 page summary of the dissertation paper you wish to workshop by November 1st 2025 here. Invitations to attend the doctoral consortium will be extended by the program committee by December 1st. If you have any questions, please email mail@monteiropedro.com.
The consortium will take place at ESCP on the morning of February 23 before the official opening of the OSWC 2026. All consortium participants will have the opportunity to attend the main conference. There are no fees associated with consortium participation.
2026 Program Committee
Nicole Abi-Esber, London School of Economics and Political Science
Michaël Bikard, INSEAD
Jillian Chown, Northwestern University
Gina Dokko, University of California, Davis
Lindred Greer, University of Michigan
Audrey Holm, HEC Paris
Ruthanne Huising, ESSEC
Chang-Wa Huynh, ESCP
Jacqueline Ng Lane, Harvard Business School
Pedro Monteiro, Copenhagen Business School
Samantha Ortiz Casillas, Nova School of Business and Economics
Bukky Akinsanmi Oyedeji, London Business School
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