On the occasion of the 36th EGOS Colloquium on Organizing for a Sustainable Future: Responsibility, Renewal & Resistance, taking place at the University of Hamburg, Germany, on July 2–4, 2020, our colleagues Peter Stücheli-Herlach, Christian Schwägerl and François Cooren are happy to invite submissions on:

Putting Management Communication
to the Practical Test in its Heyday (sub-theme 44)
∼ short papers by January 14 ∼

The aim of the discussion will be to network researchers interested in the field and to put theory and research to a “practical test” at a time when management communication appears more important than ever before. Colleagues from various international research fields will be invited to present their methodological approaches and findings.

With the growing role that organizations play in the upheavals of modern societies, we feel the urgent need to challenge how management research tends to be conducted. Organizational practices that are denoted by the term “management” are more and more discussed in current research discourses as well as in the public sphere, but questions such as responsibility, autonomy, agency or the contribution to value creation remain, in many respects, unresolved (Rüegg-Stürm & Grand, 2015: 26). If the disruptively changing society – and the role organizations play in it – form our frame of reference, we think that the question of management’s contribution to sustainable development must be posed anew and the “black box” of this controversial term must be reopened (ibid.).

Within the framework of this sub-theme, we will encourage participants to openly discuss and analyze what it means to manage and to be a manager today. We will especially draw attention to the interactional and thus linguistic dimensions of management practices. By doing so, the sub-theme aims to refine the theoretical and empirical perspectives, in which “management” is understood as a communicative constitutive practice of a communicatively constituted organization in the modern “world society” (Brummans et al., 2013; Stichweh, 2000; Danesi & Rocci, 2009).

On the one hand, this sub-theme is intended to discuss previous findings from practice-oriented research strands on the topic. On the other hand, the sub-theme will discuss whether the “practice” and “linguistic” turn in management research can lead to new questions and results in relations to the practical challenges that managers, management teams and management communities are facing in modern society.

For more information on the theme and submission instructions, please visit:

Call for Papers sub-theme 44
EGOS Colloquium website