Guest Editors:

Simon Fietze, University of Southern Denmark
Sylvia Rohlfer, Colegio Universitario de Estudios Financieros (CUNEF), Spain
Wenzel Matiaske, Helmut-Schmidt-University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, Germany

Special Issue

Over the past four decades, scholars from employment relations, human resource management, organisational behaviour and labour economics have published a vast body of literature concerning employee voice (Wilkinson & Fay, 2011). Employee voice is thereby understood as the opportunity to participate in organisational decision-making and to have a say to influence the own work and the interests of managers and owners (Barry &Wilkinson, 2016) or – in the case of employee silence – to withhold these views and concerns (Morrison & Milliken, 2003). Employee voice and silence have been linked to organisational performance and the development of competitive advantage (Barry & Wilkinson, 2016) and are a key ingredient for the positive relationship between strategic human resource management and organisational performance (Wood & Wall, 2007) which also implies a link between employee voice and innovation. Employees with the opportunity to communicate individual ideas to management and to participate in decision-making give them the possibility to express ‘creative ideas and new perspectives, increasing the likelihood of innovation’ (Grant, 2013, p. 1703; Zhou & George, 2001).

Recently, scholars are paying more attention to current topics and relate them to employee voice. One stream of research is addressing the advancing technologies and consider the digital revolution and its impact on employee voice. There is no doubt that digital technology is fundamentality changing the way we do business (Mennie, 2015) and in consequence forms, tools and channels ‘voice’. The few studies on employee voice and digitalisation are mainly dealing with social media at work and its opportunities for management to get in dialogue with employees. Holland, Cooper, and Hecker (2019), for instance, discuss conceptual issues and opportunities social media provides in the development of employee voice. In a similar vein, Barnes, Balnave, Thornthwaite, and Manning (2019) show how a union’s use of social media might facilitate greater member participation and engagement. However, more empirical evidence and conceptual considerations are needed to better understand and explain digitalisation and employee voice (or: ‘e-voice’).

Therefore, the aim of the special issue of management revue – Socio-Economic Studies is to focus on digitalisation at work and its challenges and opportunities for employee engagement, voice and silence in cross-disciplinary discussions. We welcome empirical studies as well as theoretical papers. Some context to discuss are listed below:

• To what extent do technologies impact employee voice and silence?
• To what extent do employees make use of technology to ‘raise their voice’?
• What role do trade unions play when it comes to electronic (e.g., social media) employee voice?
• What is the impact of electronic (e.g., social media) voice on traditional mechanisms of employee voice?
• What is the effectiveness of electronic (e.g., social media) voice? How does it compare to the outcomes of traditional mechanisms?
• Why do electronic (e.g., social media) employee voice systems fail?
• What is the ‘dark side’ of electronic (e.g., social media) employee voice/silence?

These are just some ideas and not an exhaustive list.

Deadline

Full papers for this special issue of management revue – Socio-Economic Studies must be submitted by 31 October 2020. All contributions will be subject to double-blind review. Papers invited to a ‘revise and resubmit’ are due 31 March 2021. The publication is scheduled for issue 1/2022. Please submit your papers electronically via the online submission system at http://www.mrev.nomos.de/ using ‘SI Employee Voice’ as article section.

Manuscript length should not exceed 10,000 words (excluding references) and the norm should be 30 pages in double-spaced type with margins of about 3 cm (1 inch) on each side of the page. Further, please follow the guidelines on the journal’s website (http://www.mrev.nomos.de/guidelines/).

Healthcare was a domain at ease with the cascade or techno-push model of innovation, with a special attention on experimentation structured by legal test protocols. The management of innovation in healthcare has attracted renewed attention with the reference to AI, “big data”, biotechs, medtechs and with the reference to user-centric innovation (as most often illustrated with medtechs and biotechs). Research in healthcare is as complex and risky as ever, but time frames for the development of innovation have adapted to the new realities of AI and biotechs, and the scope of experimentation to new stakeholders. Disruptive innovation in healthcare is a crucial driver for the evolution for this industry over the last years.

Top-down and user-centric innovation management are not in opposition; they complement each other in different areas of healthcare research, and at different stages of innovation processes. Both processes coexist for the management of innovation today and have to invent how to complement each other. The twin reference to deeptechs and to digitalization has also reshaped how to process research and generate innovation in healthcare: new stakeholders now jump into the domain without prior vicinity with the its specificities as regards safety, legal issues or mandatory experimentation and validation protocols (as illustrated in medtechs, where lots of innovators directly come from computer sciences and other domains in physics).However, the stakeholders contributing to these processes do not follow the same rationales, and do not always understand each other. These aspects now require new and adapted practices in the management of innovation. This evolution develops also in an external environment framed by the rapid aging of world population, the difficult access to medical care for some social groups due to increasing budget constraints by national Governments, and the urgency incurred by specific diseases (e.g. the COVID pandemic).

This special issue focuses on new practices for the management of innovation in all subareas of healthcare. The special issues covers the development of user-centric innovation and of experimentation to healthcare, with a special focus on its complementarities with traditional cascade top-down (techno-push) innovation. User-centric innovation in healthcare makes it also possible to test new business models with the appropriate stakeholders. The healthcare domain is original because it provides field research to analyze the dynamics in the Triple or Quadruple Helix (State, research, industry, actual people) and the interactions between them in local ecosystems. It provides also a relevant domain to question the status of „user“ in user-centric innovation.

The aim of this special issue

To collect high-quality papers addressing and contributing to the debate about the main criticalities of the innovation management in healthcare systems and organizations.  Drawing from the research directions presented earlier in this section, this call for papers seeks empirical and conceptual contributions that critically analyse the current state of top-down and user-centric innovation management in the healthcare sector. We welcome contributions about the articulation between these two approaches, and about the renewal of innovation management practices incurred by current technological disruptions, by the presence of more diverse stakeholders, and by the arrival of new innovation actors without any prior vicinity with healthcare (as medtechs most often illustrate it).  Other topics may cover the main macro-, meso, and micro-level conditions (e.g., institutions and regulations, and pricing and reimbursement, adaptation of existing business models, introduction of innovative business models, supply-chain management) of innovation management in healthcare.

We also welcome papers exploring new methods to conduct research and analyse data in light of new innovations and technological disruption in the healthcare industry.

Authors are invited to submit theoretical and empirical papers that would contribute to fulfilling the aims of the special issue.

Publication Schedule

• Manuscript submission: 31 December 2020
• Reviewer reports: 30 March 2021
• Final paper submission: 30 July 2021
• Anticipated publication date of the special issue electronic from October 2021
• Anticipated publication date of the special issue print March 2022
• All submissions must be done through ScholarOne: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ejim

Guest Editors

Francesco Schiavone, University of Naples Parthenope, Department of Management and Quantitative Studies, Italy, francesco.schiavone@uniparthenope.it
David W. Versailles, Paris School of Business, newPIC Chair, France, dwv@newpic.fr Valerie Merindol, Paris School of Business, newPIC Chair, France, vm@newpic.fr
Uta Wilkens, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) – Institute of Work Science (IAW) – Chair for Work, Human Resources and Leadership, uta.wilkens@rub.de

Call for Papers

During the last decades it has become widely accepted in management science that organizations continuously adapt to dynamic environments. Dynamic capability theory, for example, emphasizes that organizations should be constantly changing in dynamic environments (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000; Wilden, Devinney, & Dowling, 2016). Similarly, process organization studies have proposed that organizing is inherently instable and adaptive, making change the rule rather than the exception (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). Recently, these dynamics become visible in empirical phenomena such as digitalization, Industry 4.0, the sharing-economy, sustainability, or e-mobility. The central question remains how organizing can account for the flexibility required to strive and survive in these dynamic environments.

Organizational agility is a concept that is increasingly gaining popularity (Goldman, Nagel, & Preiss, 1995; Sambamurthy, Bharadwaj, & Grover, 2003; Tallon & Pinsonneault, 2011). We define organizational agility as the process of how organizations sense their environment and (re)act accordingly in order to survive in dynamics environments. Even though the agility concept is relevant, a comprehensive understanding of what underpins organizational agility is still missing. This special issue seeks to fill this gap. In order to attain this goal it strives to unravel the underlying micro-aspects and processes that support or inhibit organizational agility (Salvato & Rerup, 2011).
The special issue particularly encourages contributions that unpack three specific dimensions that underlie organizational agility: adaptive strategies, inspiring leaders and flexible structures. However, it is not limited to these dimensions.

Important notes
• While we embrace a variety of theoretical perspectives, we urge contributors to clearly state how their manuscript helps to better understand organizational agility, defined as the process of how organizations sense their environment and (re)act accordingly in order to survive in dy-namics environments.
• Note that organizational agility is not similar to agile methods. Even though it might be possible to link either aspects (or use agile methods as an empirical context) manuscripts should make a primary contribution to better understand organizational agility.
• Even though we embrace different methods and theoretical approaches, manuscripts should build on a consistent theoretical and methodological basis. We are open to all kinds of method-ological approaches, such as quantitative, qualitative and mixed method studies. Conceptual papers are also considered.
• All manuscripts have to be formatted according to the author guidelines. These guidelines can be found on the journal website.

Submission
The deadline for submission is the 30st of April 2020, 23:59 UTC+1. Manuscripts have to be submitted via the submission system at the journal webpage (www.jcsm-journal.de). The special issue is scheduled for end of 2020. If you need assistance please contact martin.rost@bwi.uni-stuttgart.de.

Editors of this issue                                                                                                                               Prof. Dr. Birgit Renzl                                                                                                                                     Dr. Christian A. Mahringer                                                                                                                            Dr. Martin Rost

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