The rapidly growing Space Economy (SE) offers a distinctive empirical setting for the NEUB Division, especially for research on the neurobiological and physiological foundations of work behavior. Long-duration missions, commercial space stations, and increasingly routine operations in extreme environments make space a frontier context where biological mechanisms are not background conditions, but central determinants of individual and team performance.
For NEUB scholars, the SE is especially compelling because space operations systematically combine microgravity, confinement, isolation, circadian disruption, and high-consequence decision-making. These conditions create an extreme case that can sharpen theory by revealing mechanisms and boundary conditions that are harder to observe in more typical workplaces. The SE therefore offers strong opportunities to study how biological states relate to organizational phenomena such as leadership under strain, fatigue and vigilance, team cognition and coordination, and adaptation in high-reliability settings.
The SE also opens important methodological opportunities. The growing use of EEG, fNIRS, and continuous biometric monitoring in space and analog environments enables researchers to connect real-time physiological dynamics with training, task design, and operational decision-making. At the same time, it raises deeper questions about measurement validity, inference, and generalizability in neuro- and bio-sensing research.
Finally, the SE brings critical ethical questions to the forefront, including the limits of physiological monitoring, issues of data governance and consent in safety-critical roles, and the implications of cognitive enhancement in extreme work contexts.
Our PDW, Space Economy: Consolidating a Research Agenda, will provide a forum for NEUB scholars interested in integrating biological mechanisms with multi-level organizational theory and developing feasible empirical strategies for studying work in extreme environments.
📍 PDW at AOM 2026: Space Economy: Consolidating a Research Agenda
🗓 August 1, 2026 | 2:00–5:30 PM
📌 Loews Hotel, Philadelphia, USA
🔗 Register (open until sold out): https://lnkd.in/e3czZT4R
📩 Questions: Mehdi.montakhabi@said.oxford.edu
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Mehdi Montakhabi
Associate Scholar
University of Oxford | Saïd Business School
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