Proposed Symposium for AOM 2019: New Forms of Collaboration at Work
Organizers: Julia Backmann & Stefan Razinskas (Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich)
Discussant: Mark Mortensen (INSEAD)
Dear colleagues,
We organize a presenter symposium on new forms of collaboration for next year's Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, which will take place in Boston, Massachusetts, August 9-13th, 2019.
The symposium will focus on advancements in organizing work by focusing on collaborations within organizations. While teams are still the most common way to organize work in organizations and have been studied intensely over the past century (Mathieu, Hollenbeck, van Knippenberg, & Ilgen, 2017), new trends in collaboration, both within and beyond the team context, have emerged in recent years. A faster than ever changing world and thus resulting need for higher adaptiveness, great strides in digitization and usage of technology for collaboration, globally operating organizations and more long-distance communication, as well as more knowledge-intense work lead to changes in how work is organized in organizations. Thus, this symposium invites work that focuses on new ways of organizing and, for instance, includes work on:
- Teams and organizations introducing and applying agile methods, which allow to react better and faster to changing product requirements and environmental conditions (Serrador & Pinto, 2015).
- Fluid and/or overlapping team memberships, leading to blurred team boundaries and team boundary permeability, and a new understanding of work organization in and across groups (Dibble & Gibson, 2018; Mortensen & Haas, 2018).
- Work coordination and work relationships being increasingly driven by digitized coordination processes (Claggett & Karahanna, 2018) and collaboration technologies (Maruping & Magni, 2015).
- Organizational structures connecting specialized work units with a common goal for better work outcomes through knowledge sharing and coordination (Shuffler & Carter, 2018).
- Usage of online communities for knowledge creation and collaboration facilitation (Faraj, Kudaravalli, & Wasko, 2015).
We welcome both conceptual and empirical work that focuses on new forms of collaboration. The symposium is also looking for innovative ideas with regards to new ways of organizing work in organizations. Therefore, it is not limited to the suggested topics above, but also invites proposals on other new forms of collaboration. Overall, 4-5 research papers focusing on these themes will be presented and discussed.
With this symposium, we intend to provide a space for interested researchers to discuss insights and challenges that emerge from these types of collaborations. We would highly appreciate your contribution to create interesting and inspiring exchanges within the research community.
If you are interested in participating in this symposium, please send an email to Julia Backmann (backmann@bwl.lmu.de) by December 7th including an abstract of what you would like to present in the symposium (around 400 words). The abstract should contain the project title, names and affiliations of the authors, and a brief summary of the work and of the methods and data used.
You will be notified by December 10th whether you have been chosen for the symposium and asked to submit an extended abstract (3-5 pages of text) by December 31th.
If you know others who might be interested in this topic, we would appreciate it if you could share this invitation with them.
Kind regards,
Julia Backmann & Stefan Razinskas
References
Claggett, J. L., & Karahanna, E. 2018. Unpacking the structure of coordination mechanisms and the role of relational coordination in an era of digitally mediated work processes. Academy of Management Review, 43(4): 704-722.
Dibble, R., & Gibson, C. B. 2018. Crossing team boundaries: A theoretical model of team boundary permeability and a discussion of why it matters. Human Relations, 71(7): 925-950.
Faraj, S., Kudaravalli, S., & Wasko, M. 2015. Leading collaboration in online communities. MIS Quarterly, 39(2): 393-412.
Maruping, L. M., & Magni, M. 2015. Motivating employees to explore collaboration technology in team contexts. MIS Quarterly, 39(1).
Mathieu, J. E., Hollenbeck, J. R., van Knippenberg, D., & Ilgen, D. R. 2017. A century of work teams in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3): 452.
Mortensen, M., & Haas, M. R. 2018. Perspective-Rethinking teams: From bounded membership to dynamic participation. Organization Science, 29(2): 341-355.
Serrador, P., & Pinto, J. K. 2015. Does agile work? - A quantitative analysis of agile project success. International Journal of Project Management, 33(5): 1040-1051.
Shuffler, M. L., & Carter, D. R. 2018. Teamwork situated in multiteam systems: Key lessons learned and future opportunities. American Psychologist, 73(4): 390-406.
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Julia Backmann
LMU Munich
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