2018 Interview: Best Symposium Award
Interview with Tina Dacin (Queen's University) and Tammar Zilber (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), winners of the 2018 Best Symposium Award
Interviewed by Georg Reischauer (WU Vienna).
The Best Symposium Award recognizes symposia that stimulate, integrate, or extend discussions about organization and management theory. The 2018 winning symposium, “Situated Institutions: The Role of Place, Space and Embeddedness in Institutional Dynamics," was organized Tina Dacin (Queen's University), Tammar Zilber (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Michael Lounsbury (University of Alberta).
Congratulations for being awarded the Best Symposium Award! Can you briefly elaborate on your symposium?
Our symposium focused on the role of place/space in institutional dynamics. It included talks by Sunasir Dutta & Michael Park, Brett Crawford & Tina Dacin, Tammar Zilber, April Wright, Alan Meyer & Trish Reay, and Mike Lounsbury as a discussant.
How did you come up with the idea for the symposium?
In recent years, we’ve see an expansion in the modalities institutional scholars study, going beyond written and oral texts to include the visual, material, emotional and more. In that context, there is some very interesting recent work that attests to the importance of place and space. We both have work in progress that relates to institutions and place, and we would discuss our interests whenever we met in conferences and workshops. Tina is focused on custodianship of communities and place and Tammar is interested in connecting place and institutions. And then we thought – why not expand the conversation and arrange a symposium, so we can hear how others are approaching the issue, collecting spatial-related data and conceptualizing space and place.
What promises and future avenues do you see for institutional studies that draw upon the concept of place?
We believe the study of space and of place as an institution can help us strike a more nuanced and sophisticated balance between universal laws and their local manifestations.
What empirical settings do you consider as highly promising for institutional studies of place?
In effect, any setting will be relevant, as all institutional dynamics – like all human existence more generally – unfold within specific spaces and places, and further construct and reconstruct these spaces and places. Still, the studies presented in the symposium relate to some "mundane" places like Israeli hi-tech (Zilber), traditional places of shoemaking in the US (Dutta et al.) and hospital emergency rooms (Wright et al.), as well more exotic ones, like hubs of fly fishing (Crawford et al.).
Again, congratulations for winning the Best Symposium Award! Is there any advice on the symposium and its development that you would like to share?
AOM and OMT give us a great platform to further develop the theoretical and methodological conversation we want to be part of. A good symposium always starts from the genuine interest of organizers and participants to engage with each other and the issues at hand. And, it is always good to start organizing really early to better the likelihood that the people you want to include will be available. Thanks to all the presenters in our symposium, the audience that joined us, and to OMT for the generous recognition!