Abschluss des DFG Netzwerkes

December 21, 2021 0 Comment Guemuesay read

Unser DFG Netzwek “Grundlegende gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen und Neue Formen des Organisierens” kommt zu seinem natürlichen Ende. Das Netzwerk traf sich fünfmal und pflegte auch zwischen den Treffen einen intensiven Austausch. Die Treffen fanden von 2018 bis 2021 an fünf unterschiedlichen Standorten und Institutionen statt. Jedes Treffen bot ein vielfältiges Angebot bestehend aus inhaltlichen Auseinandersetzungen und sozialen Aktivitäten sowie Planung des Research in the Sociology of Organizations (RSO) Volumen und je zwei Keynotes. Darüber hinaus gab es einen regelmäßigen Austausch auf Konferenzen wie die Academy of Management (AOM) oder der European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) und durch Online-Treffen.

	Datum	Ort
Treffen I	04.-05.10.2018	Universität Hamburg
Treffen II	14.-15.03.2019	Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Treffen III	19.-20.09.2019	Rotterdam School of Management
Treffen IV	05.-06.03.2020	Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
Treffen V	20.-21.09.2021	Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin

Treffen I: 04.-05.10.2018

Ziel des ersten Treffens war ein Verständnis für die Komplexität der Grand Challenges und neuer Formen der Organisation zu entwickeln. Es sprachen Keynote-Speakers Johanna Mair, Professorin an der Hertie School of Governance (über ihre Erkenntnissen zum Verhältnis zwischen Innovation und Skalierung) und Juliane Reinecke, Professorin am King’s College London (über ihre Arbeit zu nachhaltigem kollektiven Engagement). Bernd Ulrich, stellvertretender Chefredakteur der deutschen Tageszeitung Die Zeit, hielt eine Dinner-Rede über zentrale Probleme unserer Zeit: den Klimawandel, die Verschiebung der globalen Machtdynamik und die nationalen Folgen. Jürgen Trittin, ehemaliger deutscher Bundesminister für Umwelt, Naturschutz und nukleare Sicherheit sowie kurzzeitig Bundesminister für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft, sprach über ähnliche Probleme wie Ungleichheit, Klimawandel und schlechte globale Governance.

Treffen II: 14.-15.03.2019

Es sprachen an der VU Amsterdam die Keynote-Speakers Jennifer Howard-Grenville, Professorin an der Judge Business School der Universität Cambridge, und Frank de Bakker, Professor an der IESEG School of Management in Lille, Frankreich. Wir erörterten einflussreiche aktuelle Beiträge zur akademischen Literatur über Grand Challenges und neue Formen des Organisierens; und widmeten uns der Frage, wie diesen Herausforderungen in unserer eigenen Forschung, Lehre sowie in der Praxis begegnet werden kann. Wir diskutierten, wie eine Wissenschaft gefördert werden kann, die dazu beiträgt, Grand Challenges durch neue Formen der Organisation anzugehen. Ebenso zentral waren methodische und pädagogische Herausforderungen sowie verschiedene Strategien, um mit unserer Arbeit eine deutliche Wirkung zu erzielen.

Treffen III: 19.-20.09.2019

Es sprachen an der Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) die Keynote-Speakers Tima Bansal von der Ivey Business School (zu Managementtheorien und Nachhaltigkeitsstrategien) und Joep Cornelissen von der RSM (zu Organisationstheorien im Zusammenhang von Grand Challenges). Auch haben wir das weitere Vorgehen des RSO Volume geplant – samt darin erscheinende Kapitel sowie anschließender Mitteilung der Ergebnisse in Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft.

Treffen IV: 05.-06.03.2020

Es sprachen an der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg die Keynote-Speakers Professorin Jana Costas von der Europa-Universität Viadrina (mit kritischer Perspektive auf den Begriff der wissenschaftlichen Öffentlichkeitsarbeit) und Professorin Laura Marie Edinger-Schons von der Universität Mannheim (über die beeindruckenden Lehr- und Aufklärungsmaßnahmen, die ihr Team und sie mit einer Vielzahl von Partner*innen durchführen). Vorträge und Diskussionen zu Formen der Lehre, Formen der Gestaltung/Organisation, Formen der Prüfung und “Best Practices” in der Öffentlichkeitsarbeit förderten die Debatte darüber, wie Forschende mit Fachleuten und der Gesellschaft im Allgemeinen in Kontakt treten können.

Treffen V: 20.-21.09.2021

Das fünfte und letzte Netzwerktreffen der Forschungsgruppe war auch das erste persönliche Treffen seit dem Beginn der Pandemie. Es sprachen am Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft in Berlin die Keynote-Speakers Professorin und Co-Gründerin von Scientists for Future Maja Göpel (zu Wissenschaftlichkeit als bedingte Entstehung oder bewusste Entscheidung) und Professor Gert Wagner (zu Wissenstransfer). In ihrem Workshop verbanden Professor Leonhard Dobusch und Dr. Anna Jobin eine Vielfalt an Herausforderungen mit Medienaufmerksamkeit und Arbeitsbelastung. Abschließend besprachen wir die nächsten Schritte des DFG Netzwerks für die nahe Zukunft inklusive Förderung und Publikationen.

Fazit: Das Netzwerk endet, die Arbeit geht weiter.

Organization Society

Article nominated for VHB Best Paper Award 2020

December 19, 2019 0 Comment Guemuesay read

Our article that engages with themes such as elastic hybridity, complexity, paradox, resilience & purpose is nominated for the VHB Best Paper Award 2020. The VHB is the German Academic Association for Business Research.

List of nominated papers: https://vhbonline.org/wissenschaftsfoerderung/vhb-preise/nominierungen-2020/nominierungen-best-paper-award-2020

Press release in German: https://www.wu.ac.at/presse/presseaussendungen/presseaussendung-details/detail/zielkonflikte-im-unternehmen-einigkeit-durch-mehrdeutigkeit

Press release in English: https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/research/research-showcase/when-organisational-purposes-conflict-leading-deliberate-vagueness

About the article: We explain that existing approaches to managing hybridity focus on solutions that are organizational, structural and static. These approaches manage institutional tensions on behalf of employees. Yet, where competing values are incompatible and central to both the organization and the fundamental beliefs of its employees, it is impractical for an organization to prescribe how individuals manage them.

We outline polysemy and polyphony as mechanisms that dynamically engage conflicting logics through an organizational-individual interplay. Borrowing from paradox theory, they explain how hybrids can empower individuals to fluidly separate and integrate logics when neither structural compartmentalizing nor organizational blending are feasible because management cannot prescribe a specific balance of logics. The result is a state of elastic hybridity, constituted through the recursive, multi-level relationship between polysemy and polyphony. Elastic hybrids maintain unity in diversity. Like the bank, they are capable of institutionally bending without organizationally breaking and thus enable individuals to practice more of their personal convictions at work while still experiencing a sense of shared organizational purpose.

Organization Society

Unity in Diversity in Organizations & Society

January 9, 2019 0 Comment Guemuesay read

A new article co-authored with colleagues Michael Smets and AMJ cover Tim Morris has been published at the Academy of Management Journal. It is entitled ‘God at Work’: Engaging central and incompatible institutional logics through elastic hybridity and examines how the first Islamic Bank in Germany maintains unity in diversity by forming what we call an elastic hybrid that remains resilient despite contradictory beliefs and values that persist over time. We show how the bank is capable of institutionally bending without organizationally breaking enabling individuals to practice more of their personal convictions at work while still experiencing a sense of shared organizational purpose.

Implications for politics

Implications for politics can be read in-between the lines: Populist advocate for homogeneity as it reduces complexity. It puts us into boxes and separates us. Populists stand for this approach. Effectively, they compartmentalize societies. In contrast, heterogeneity is much more challenging, but also more rewarding. Heterogeneity is not just blending: we do not become all the same, but we cope with this diversity – with unity in diversity. Our societies become elastic, accommodating, and enriched by plurality. I believe, this is one of the fundamental social and societal challenges of our time: do we embrace the complexity of humankind or do we attempt to reduce it?

Some coverage in English: 1, 2 & German: 3, 4, 5

Organization

Organizational Scent

December 17, 2018 0 Comment Guemuesay read

Happy to announce that a new article co-authored with Markus Höllerer and Renate Meyer has been published in M@n@gement (Vol. 21, Iss. 4). Free to download here. Screenshot 2018-12-17 at 15.19.16

Grand Challenges Organization Society Zahnräder Network

Sustainable Development Goals & Academia

November 12, 2018 0 Comment Guemuesay read

I gave an interview (in German) on researching new forms of organizing such as social entrepreneurial ventures, incubators & discourse spaces and how these tackle grand challenges. The interview also includes some reflections on the Zahnräder Network:

17 Ziele in der Wissenschaft: Neue Räume für neues Denken

Armut, Hunger, Klimawandel – ohne Frage große Herausforderungen unserer Zeit. Wie innovative Organisationsformen diese Themen angehen, dazu forscht Dr. Ali Aslan Gümüsay an der Universität Hamburg. Seit 2018 leitet er das von der Deutschen Forschungsgesellschaft geförderte Netzwerk „Grand Challenges & New Forms of Organizing“. Er ist Mitgründer des Zahnräder Netzwerks und lebt mit seiner Familie in Hamburg. Ein Gespräch über große Herausforderungen, wissenschaftliche Leidenschaft und persönliches Engagement.

Grand Challenges

First network meeting: Tackling Grand Challenges

October 15, 2018 0 Comment Guemuesay read

first-dfg-meeting We had our first network meeting in Hamburg on October 4/5, 2018, to bring together research on grand challenges and new forms of organizing. Our members engaged with questions around ecological, social and governance concerns by discussing papers with topics ranging from self-learning algorithms to sanitation in rural India.

We invited two expert scholars to share their views and research on grand challenges. Johanna Mair, professor at the Hertie School of Governance, spoke about combining and bridging rigor and relevance. She also presented findings on the relationship between innovation and scaling, depicting innovation as an investment and scaling as potentially creating value and impact. Juliane Reinecke, professor at King’s College London, presented work on sustainable collective action – in contrast to ceremonial commitment – in the aftermath of the fatal Rana Plaza building collapse. She described the wickedness of the challenge for practitioners and researchers alike, as “one cannot first understand, then solve” and the “formulation of a wicked problem is the problem” (Rittel & Webber, 1973). Scholars in the field then engage with complexities, capture multiple, contradictory accounts of events from diverse respondents, and have to make sense of them.

At the same time, we also extended the conversation to politics and practice. Bernd Ulrich, deputy chief editor of the German newspaper Die Zeit, gave a dinner speech on central problems of our time: climate change as well as shifting global power dynamics and national consequences. His speech was also a plea for action to defend normality radically and to advocate for a transformative instead of incremental politics. Echoing the notion of grand challenges, he noted that the problem for politics is that challenges are conceived as additive instead of as inter-related. Jürgen Trittin, former German minister and current member of federal parliament, addressed similar concerns around inequality, climate change and bad global governance. He emphasized the interconnectedness between various social challenges and identified climate change as the key threat multiplier for these challenges. His talk ended with a plea for a European response strategy.

We finished our two-day meeting reflecting on how research can have more practical relevance to address these central concerns. We will take this up in our second meeting in March in Amsterdam.

Some impressions were shared via Twitter here. If you are interested in our research and wish to explore potential collaborations, please contact us here.

Grand Challenges Organization Sharing Economy Society Sustainability

Sharing Economy, Grand Challenges & Refugees

July 9, 2018 0 Comment Guemuesay read

sharing New piece on the sharing economy, grand challenges, social movement, platforms, and refugees fresh out at Academy of Management Discoveries. My commentary on the article by Martin Kornberger, Stephan Leixnering, Renate Meyer & Markus Höllerer.

Excerpt
The sharing economy is frequently linked to companies such as Airbnb and Uber that enable “collaborative consumption” (Botsman & Rogers, 2010), that is people make their personal belongings (e.g., vehicles, homes) or services (e.g., workforce) available to virtual strangers through community-based online services (Hamari, Sjöklint, & Ukkonen, 2016; Mair & Reischauer, 2017). Platform companies are not sharing their resources, but share other people’s resources. In these cases, resources that were private like a home or car become goods or services. A novel reservoire of goods and labor is marketized and employed in the capitalist system through digital technologies. Sharing is an increase in the utilized capacity of resources.

However, these types of sharing have a bitter-sweet aftertaste, because they effectively sell – not share – temporarily resources through platform economies without a shared sense of caring. By combining two organizational types, platform and social movement, to a novel form of organzing, the authors potentially present a means to allow the sharing of resources without the surplus value being taken by few companies. Value and values are aligned into a value(s) pursuit (Gümüsay, 2017) and sharing becomes both a transaction and interaction as well as an economic and moral activity.

Organization Religion

1st Vienna Symposium on Faith & Management

June 26, 2018 0 Comment Guemuesay read

The 1st Vienna Symposium on Faith & Management just finished. It was wonderful co-organizing the event with Martin Steinbereithner and Wolfgang Mayrhofer at Vienna University of Economics & Business. Great conversations, paper presentations, and keynotes by David Miller and Dorothea Alewell. Much more to come, I hope.

Grand Challenges Organization Society Sustainability

New scientific network “Grand Challenges & New Forms of Organizing”

June 21, 2018 0 Comment Guemuesay read

The German Research Foundation has approved dfg funding for our scientific network. Over the next 3 years the network studies the relationship between societal grand challenges and new forms of organizing.

Grand challenges represent fundamental, global societal challenges of ecological or social nature that require coordinated and collective efforts of multiple actors, including business firms, governments, civil society, and academia. Solving problems like global poverty, climate change or precarious working conditions that emerged as an effect of digitalization and the “sharing economy” are key challenges both for researchers as well as practitioners. At the same time, opportunities arise when considering the role of new technologies and approaches to address grand challenges. They enable the emergence of new forms of temporary, flexible and fluid organizing that may be necessary to discern possible solutions. Yet, academic research that examines the reciprocal relationship between grand challenges and new forms of organization is still nascent.

This network takes an organizational theory perspective on the reciprocal relationship by asking two interdependent research questions. The first question is: What is the relationship between new forms of organizing and grand challenges? Our aim to theorize this relationship is not without complications: On the one hand, examining new forms of organizing in light of grand challenges requires a high degree of theoretical and methodological pluralism in our research. On the other hand, devising practically and managerially relevant solutions requires some degree of consensus among the academic community. The second research question that this network therefore seeks to address is: How can scientific research develop consistent practical implications despite the theoretical and methodological pluralism that pervades organizational research?

Graphical overview:

Further information:

Project Duration	June 2018 – May 2021
Funding Agency	Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
Principal Investigator	Dr. Ali Aslan Gümüsay
Cooperation Partners	Dr. Emilio Marti Prof. Dr. Hannah Trittin Dr. Christopher Wickert
Network Members	Dr. Marlen de la Chaux Prof. Dr. Anja Danner-Schröder Dr. Katharina Dittrich Prof. Dr. Leonhard Dobusch Dr. Sascha Friesike Prof. Dr. Thomas Gegenhuber Michael Grothe-Hammer Dr. Ali Aslan Gümüsay Dr. Arne Kroeger Dr. Emilio Marti Prof. Dr. Dennis Schoeneborn Prof. Dr. Elke Schüßler Prof. Dr. Hannah Trittin Dr. Matthias Wenzel Dr. Christopher Wickert

Implications for politics

Sharing is not always caring