The 16th International Human Resource Management Conference, which will take place on June 2-5, 2020 at ESCP Europe, Paris, France.

The 2020 International HRM conference is linked to the IJHRM Special Issue on “New ways of working: Understanding the implications for employees across different cultural and organisational contexts”. Authors have the opportunity to submit a paper to the conference and participate in a developmental session, before submitting the manuscript to the IJHRM. The guest editors invite authors to submit abstracts via www.ihrm2020.org. In case the abstracts have been accepted, the authors will upload a full paper to the conference in May 2020.

Invitation for the submission of abstracts

Deadline for the submission of abstracts for the conference: December 1, 2019

Guest editors:  Kerstin Alfes, Argyro Avgoustaki, T. Alexandra Beauregard, Almudena Cañibano, Maral Muratbekova-­Touron

The objective of the special issue is to bring together research, which explores the implications of new ways of working for employees’ attitudes, performance, and wellbeing. The guest editors welcome theoretical and empirical submissions which provide a more nuanced understanding of how employees experience and are affected by work in less traditional work structures in order to depict a holistic picture of contemporary work arrangements. Specifically, the guest editors are interested in studies which explore how employees experience telecommuting, holacracy, empowerment‐based team structures, amongst others. They also encourage submissions which analyse how employees react to organisational changes driven by digitalisation and artificial intelligence. Moreover, they welcome studies which analyse the positive and negative implications of platform-based employment structures and algorithmic management, i.e. management via automated digital platforms (e.g. Amazon, Lyft, Uber, etc.) for employees. Potential research areas include, but are not limited to:

• Individual experiences of new ways of working
• The implications of new ways of working for employees over time
• The increasing segmentation of the workforce and the implications of new ways of working for different sub-groups of the workforce
• The implication of algorithmic management for employees’ careers and wellbeing
• Digitalisation and new ways of working
• Changing approaches to work in diverse cultural and institutional contexts

This special issue is linked to the 2020 International HRM conference hosted at ESCP Europe’s Paris campus in June 2020. Authors have the opportunity to submit a paper to the conference and participate in a developmental session, before submitting the manuscript to the IJHRM. The guest editors invite authors to submit abstracts via www.ihrm2020.org. In case the abstracts have been accepted, the authors will upload a full paper to the conference in May 2020.

Deadline for the submission of Full Papers: 31 July 2020

Invitation for the submission of abstracts

The objective of this workshop is to go beyond established ways of thinking about sustainability and towards understanding how new forms of organizing – such as more participatory and distributed models (Ferraro, Etzion & Gehman, 2015) – can contribute to the sustainable usage of environmental, social, and economic resources in ways that avoid their degradation and exhaustion through models that will themselves be enduring. This includes addressing the questions of why unsustainable forms of organizations persist, how established organizations can be restructured sustainably, and what makes alternative forms of organization (un)sustainable.

Overall, they seek contributions from a wide range of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. Specifically, their intention is to bridge diverse but established areas for sustainability research such as corporate social responsibility, diversity management, employment relations, employee health and wellbeing, environmentalism and business ethics with wider organizational scholarship on social movements, non-governmental and third sector organizations, public policy and local community organizing and, more broadly, research on the post-corporate economic organization. They hereby aim to provide opportunities for new connections across proximate disciplines, including management studies, (comparative) political economy, business ethics, social movement theory, economic sociology, the sociology of work and industrial relations, while retaining a clear focus on organizations and practices of organizing. They explicitly encourage submissions from less well-represented regions, where organizational alternatives are often to be found, as well as internationally comparative work. They are also keen to receive work that bridges or challenges existing approaches, or highlights the trade-offs and dilemmas among different sustainability goals.

Deadline: 6^thDecember of 2019

For further information

Special Issue

The changing context of work – e.g. though globalisation, intensification of competition, deregulation, growth in employment flexibility, technological changes, digitalization – increasingly triggers debates about the quality of working life and concerns about the well-being of employees. Observations of precarious forms of employment or increasing demands and intensification of work thereby often elicit nostalgic memories of the apparently ‘good old days’ where work was characterized by full-time employment, an adequate income, a permanent contract, and social insurance. However, these ‘old’ standards of ‘good work’ did not apply to all employees and even in the ‘good old days’, work was often characterized by strict hierarchy and low influence, where employees’ interests were largely neglected. Here, modern forms of employment could lead to improvements by providing, for example, more autonomy, involvement, flexible working hours, a better work life balance, and inclusion.

The question how to evaluate the changes in the world of work is not easy and there are manifold perspectives how to define the standards of ‘good work’. One perspective could be to identify the work and employment conditions that are actually increasing or threatening employee well-being. A particular challenge here is to consider the different dimensions of employee well-being, which includes aspects like physical and mental health, satisfaction, engagement or fairness. Another perspective could be to confront the new developments to the aspirations and values of employees. The latter are also changing since new generations enter the labour market, since women increasingly participate in the labour force, or because migration movements lead to an increasing diversity. Finally, one could contrast the changes with the current regulations in labour and social law concerning employee protection rights, working time and wage standards, social security, and representation of employees’ interests.

In this Special Issue they want to bring together research that addresses the issue of eroding and new standards of ‘good work’ and they encourage researchers to share their thoughts with them.

Deadline and Submissions Guidelines:

Manuscript length should not exceed 8,000 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.

Full papers for this special issue of management revue – Socio-Economic Studies must be submitted by December 30, 2019.

For further information

In der Tradition der Betriebswirtschaftslehre hat es immer wieder Phasen einer verstärkten Auseinandersetzung mit dem Gegenstand, dem Erkenntnisinteresse und den Forschungsmethoden der Betriebswirtschaftslehre als wissenschaftlicher Disziplin gegeben. Seit nunmehr über zwei Jahrzehnten lässt sich allerdings eine merkliche Abnahme an wissenschaftstheoretischen Betrachtungen in der Betriebswirtschaftslehre feststellen. Mögen die Gründe hierfür vielfältig sein, hat die Bedeutung der Wissenschaftstheorie für die Betriebswirtschaftslehre nichts an ihrer Aktualität eingebüßt. Im Gegenteil: Gerade in einem vermeintlich „postfaktischen“ Zeitalter kommt der Frage nach der Wahrheitsfähigkeit wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse eine Schlüsselrolle zu, insbesondere dann, wenn man sie – wie in der Betriebswirtschaftslehre – an ihrem Anwendungsbezug bemisst. Diese Frage gewinnt umso mehr an Relevanz, als die aktuelle Diskussion um die „Performativität“ wirt-schafts- und insbesondere betriebswirtschaftswissenschaftlicher Aussagen gerade das Problem adressiert, wie eine per se anwendungsorientierte Wissenschaft den Anspruch auf die Wahrheitsfähigkeit ihrer Aussagen beibehalten kann, wenn sie durch die Gestaltung der „Realität“ (z.B. durch die Verbreitung bestimmter Managementansätze in der betrieblichen Praxis) zugleich auch ihr Untersuchungs- und unter Umständen auch ihr Erkenntnisobjekt beeinflusst und damit „postfaktisch“ manipulieren kann.

Auch wenn sich die wissenschaftstheoretischen Diskussionen in der Tradition der Betriebswirtschaftslehre nicht wirklich angenähert zu haben scheinen und eine gewisse Wiederholung in den dargebrachten Argumenten ermüden mag, bedarf es einer kontinuierlichen Auseinandersetzung mit wissenschaftstheoretischen Fragestellungen, damit ihr normativer Charakter nicht in den Status einer unhinterfragten Selbstverständlichkeit abrutscht.

Vor diesem Hintergrund ist es das Ziel des Heftes, Beiträge zu präsentieren, die sich kritisch mit aktuellen wissenschaftstheoretischen Fragestellungen der Betriebswirtschaftslehre auseinandersetzen.

Abgabetermin: 29. Februar 2020

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