Organization and Management Theory OMT

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to announce the next Alberta Institutions Conference - and associated PhD Workshop - which will be held in Banff, Alberta, in June 2025. Please find the call for papers copied below and attached, and the conference website here. We are looking forward to an exciting and engaging event - please do consider submitting your work! 

With best wishes,
Chris, on behalf of the organizing committee

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Crafting Futures: Institutions and their Implications

Call for papers for the 7th Alberta Institutions Conference and PhD Workshop: June 19-21, 2025, Banff, Alberta, Canada

The vaunted end of history has given way to a proliferation of futures – utopian, dystopian, simple, complex, and confused. Institutional theory has much to offer here: it provides tools to understand the cultural production and consumption of imagined futures, the cultural struggles and work through which such futures are brought into being, and the infrastructures that enable, constrain, and orient the construction of the future. It also has much to consider, and perhaps new themes to assimilate: the emergence of new modes of knowledge production oriented towards possible futures, of new and artificial entities that need to be accounted for, and of new cultural forces shaping the future of social theory and academia. We aim to encourage a generative and diverse gathering of institutionalists and the institutionally curious across all career stages, including PhD students, to discuss such themes. We thus call for papers interested in the myriad intersections of institutions and futures, and in topics including (but not limited to):

• The institutional production of imagined futures. Building on discussions at the previous conference regarding the "era of crises", we are keen to explore how utopian and dystopian futures are imagined, theorized, articulated, and disseminated. What institutional arrangements form fertile conditions for the emergence and consolidation of such futures? When are more or less distant futures likely to emerge? Which forms of institutional and social-symbolic work are implicated in the production and disruption of imagined futures? When and how are people excluded from these processes? Through which institutional channels do imagined futures travel – and how?
• The institutional consumption of imagined futures. Audiences are not passive recipients of futures, but participants in their elaboration, imposition and subversion. How do institutional conditions shape the types of imagined future that resonate and take root? How do differences across fields inflect the consumption, translation, and impact of futures? What forms of institutional and social-symbolic work reshape imagined futures as they take root – or prevent them doing so? Which actors are most influential in this process? Whose futures are trusted? Which kinds of futures lend themselves to assimilation in prevailing logics, or to the transformation of those logics? And which kinds of logics, in turn, provide hospitable terrain for the proliferation or hegemony of futures?
• Cultural infrastructures and futures. Futures are not just imagined, but brought into being or forestalled… How do institutional infrastructures enable and constrain the enactment of potential futures? And what institutional demands might specific futures entail? If we are concerned with dystopias, then what are the institutional preconditions of those dystopias – and how might they be undermined? If we are concerned with utopias, what institutional infrastructures must be established to render them possible? Such questions seem especially urgent in the face of imagined futures such as existential climactic transformations, the shoring up or demise of democracy, the fragmentation of world society, and the rise of artificial intelligences of varying intelligence.
• Theorizing future ontologies: environmental, technological, and anthropological. Shifting social realities call for conceptual stocktaking. How well do existing institutional theories translate to the Anthropocene and beyond-accounting for the interlaced social, natural, and technological assemblages that constitute our planetary system, and their transformations? How well do our theories translate to the rise of generative algorithms and the looming possibilities of artificial intelligence and robotics-accounting for these new actors' distinctive patterns of intra-action with one another, and with institutions? How well are we positioned to account for the ways that futures may reconstruct human nature itself-genetically, neurologically, cybernetically, and discursively? And how might we best extend our toolkits to address the institutional foundations and implications of future ontologies?
• Practices for theorizing futures. All the themes above could fuel descriptive or representational theory and empirics, or performative and prescriptive work. What practices should guide us if we wish to pursue direct influence over the construction and forestalling of social futures? How does one effectively theorize the not-yet existent? What epistemic and occupational risks may attend such a shift in focus? How might such novel practices fit into our ecosystem of theoretical and empirical approaches, without displacing our achievements to date?
• Futures for institutionalism. Questions of theoretical practice cannot be wholly separated from the future of institutionalism itself, as well as its associated disciplines and field. What institutional shifts and risks do we see in the institutional foundations of institutionalism? What futures might we craft for ourselves? What futures might lurk uninvited over the horizon? How might unwelcome futures be yet forestalled?

We are delighted to announce two keynote speakers, providing perspectives on institutions and futures from within and beyond the field of organizational institutionalism. We are excited for an engaging, transdisciplinary discussion around the interplays of institutions and futures, their consequences, and the potential futures of our field:

• Our 1^st keynote will be Professor Tammar Zilber (Professor and Head of Organizational Behaviour at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and co-Editor-in-Chief of Organization Studies)
• Our 2^nd keynote speaker will be Professor Andreas Glaeser (Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of Chicago, co-Editor of the book series Chicago Studies in the Practices of Meaning).

Conference Details

The Seventh Triennial Alberta Institutions Conference, sponsored by the Alberta School of Business, will be held from June 19^th-21^st in Banff, Alberta, Canada. Approximately 25 papers will be selected for presentation.

PhD Paper Development Workshop

A PhD Workshop will be held on June 19^th-co-sponsored by Organization Studies and Organization Theory. Spaces are limited. Participants are encouraged to arrive on June 18^th, and free hotel accommodation will be made available for those in need of support.

Submission Deadlines

• Extended abstract submission (approximately 500-800 words): November 22^nd, 2024.
• Notification of acceptance: January 3^rd, 2025.
• Submission of full paper (maximum 8,000 words): May 1^st, 2025.
• Please email submissions to: ssheplaw@ualberta.ca. For regular submissions, please use the subject line "Alberta Conference Abstract"; for the PhD Workshop, please use the subject line "PhD Workshop Abstract".

Fees: There will be a conference fee of CDN$400 for all attendees (the fee will be waived for Ph.D. students).

Organizing Committee: Emily Block, Tony Briggs, David Deephouse, Vern Glaser, Royston Greenwood, Bob Hinings, Dev Jennings, Joanna Li, Michael Lounsbury, Trish Reay, Angelique Slade Shantz, Bryan Spencer, Chris Steele, Lu Wang, Marvin Washington, and all of the University of Alberta.

As it becomes available, additional information will be posted on our conference website.