Conference „Empirical Personnel and Organizational Research“ on 9 and 10 November 2023 at the University of Southern Denmark Sønderborg & Special Issue

With the thematic focus, this year’s annual meeting addresses the megatrends of social sustainability and new understandings of quality work for employees. Social sustainability means offering processes for creating successful places that promote well-being by understanding what people need from the places they live and work.

Social sustainability supports social and cultural life, social amenities, citizen and employee engagement opportunities, and space for people and places to evolve as belonging and identity. Social sustainability can be reached by aligning formal and informal processes; systems, structures, and relationships must allow current and future generations to create healthy and durable living. Socially sustainable communities are equitable, diverse, connected, and democratic and provide a good quality of life. The annual meeting organisers are interested in how organisations of all types can contribute to a social sustainability culture and how these cultures can be organised. Examples of problems, challenges, work practices and initiatives of interest to the conference and social sustainability paradigm are, among other things:

• The reproduction and production of social closure and exclusion in organisations: starting from cultural and social bias in recruiting, over-performance and promotion management (meritocracy, the seniority principle) to self-exclusion of particular demographic groups, workplaces have the power to divide social groups further – or potentially mend this gap.
• Private companies are increasingly interested in alternative work standards concerning technological progression: changes include agile, low-hierarchy digitalised workflows, and liberal group and project management, especially in IT and high-tech, but also in other domains.
• Organisations are increasingly encouraging issues of employee identity, belonging, (mental) health and psychological safety, cultural struggles, and empowerment: such momentum can be explored and evaluated from different perspectives. While ethical considerations (e.g., overcoming racial discrimination) matter, managing employee demands resulting from their identity and belonging and integrating resulting practices in the business and management model (e.g., rewarding employee engagement appropriately) must be equally thought through.
• The megatrends towards sustainability and new standards of good work have increased the „talk“ about such issues: Organisations have professionalised their public verbiage, installed public corporate persona and otherwise improved their image regarding corporate consciousness and engagement. Team building measures and a focus on good and friendly work milieus are ubiquitous – however, whether or not such measures benefit employees or merely the „new spirit of capitalism“ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007) is to be explored.

In addition, contributions that deal with other empirical personnel and organisational research topics beyond the conference topic are also welcome.

Conference dates:
Submission deadline: 30 September 2023.
Registration deadline: 15 October 2023.
Conference: 9 & 10 November 2023.
Conference’s website.
Special Issue dates:
Full paper submission deadline: 28 February 2024.
Publication planned for Issue 4/2024.
View the complete Call for Papers here.