That’s Interesting! Award

Since the 29th EGOS Colloquium in Montréal in 2013, a further prize is granted for papers that might not necessarily comply with standard paper formats, but advance a particularly challenging new idea:

  • the That’s Interesting! Award, sponsored by Aalto University School of Economics (Helsinki, Finland), amounting to € 2,000.

The winning paper must cross intellectual boundaries, challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, attract the reader's attention and make an original argument. – The prize is awarded at the following EGOS Colloquium.


Please note:

  • Only full papers which have been uploaded via the EGOS submission system can be con­sidered for these awards!

  • When uploading the full paper via the EGOS website, author(s) should indicate whether she/he/they would like this paper to compete for this award.
     

That’s Interesting! Award 2019

[tba]

SHORT LIST for the That’s Interesting! Award 2019

  • Kate Lockwood Harris & Karen Lee Ashcraft: Doing power, deferring difference: Gendered-raced processes and the case of Karen Barad
    [sub-theme 10: Doing Process Research: Approaching Power as Productive and Relational in Organizing]

  • Arvind Karunakaran: Front-line professionals in the wake of social media scrutiny: A process model of obscured accountability in the digital age
    [sub-theme 08: Occupational Membership, Careers and Resources in Flux]

  • Rasmus Koss Hartman, Anders Dahl Krabbe & André Spicer: Veblenian entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial economy
    [sub-theme 49: Dreams, Fictions and Calculations: Imagined Futures in Organizational Life]

     

That’s Interesting! Award 2018

Adi Sapir (University of Haifa, Israel):

Mythologizing the Story of a Scientific Invention: Constructing the Legitimacy of Research Commercialization


Abstract
This paper explores the processes through which an organizational story acquires mythological status within an organizational field. To this end, I analyze a story of a successful case of academic technology transfer that gained mythological status in the field of higher education in Israel: the commercialization of the innovative pharmaceutical drug Copaxone.
 

SHORT LIST for the That's Interesting! Award 2018

  • Lukas Löhlein & David Twardowski: Lists, Accounting and the (Un)Making of the Organization: Understanding Shifting Modes of Formalization within Germany’s ‘Refugee Welcome Movement’
    [sub-theme 62: (Re-)Producing Civil Society through Organizational Practices]

  • R. Duncan M. Pelly: Sadism in Foreign Lands: The Burn Pit Atrocity
    [sub-theme 01: Ethnography: Surprises, Stories, Speaking Out]

  • Adi Sapir: Mythologizing the Story of a Scientific Invention: Constructing the Legitimacy of Research Commercialization
    [sub-theme 48: More to Talk About: Unexpected Roles of Language in Organizing]

     

That’s Interesting! Award 2017

Juliane Reinecke (University of Warwick, UK) & Shahzad (Shaz) Ansari (University of Cambridge, UK):

Targets as Allies or Adversaries: An Interactional Framing Perspective on the “Activist’s Dilemma”


Abstract
In interacting with the establishment, social movements can confront a dilemma. While they seek to expose the failings of elite institutions and adopt combative approaches such as boycotts, they also need to collaborate with them to access important resources, seek allies and gain legitimacy.
Highlighting the interactional nature of framing, we explain how frames emerge from interactions and situational contingencies, causing shifts in how movements frame targets and yielding unanticipated outcomes.

SHORT LIST for the That's Interesting! Award 2017

  • Thijs Willems, Alfons van Marrewijk & Sierk Ybema: T.I.S. 3.1: The Management of Railroad Suicides
    [sub-theme 14: “De/Humanisation and Organization”]

  • Juliane Reinecke & Shahzad (Shaz) Ansari: Targets as Allies or Adversaries: An International Framing Perspective on the “Activist’s Dilemma”
    [sub-theme 25: “The Political Organization of Markets: Social Movements, Stakeholders and Non-market Strategy”]

  • Yousra Rahmouni Elidrissi: Bodies on the Line – Performing Embodied Politics in the French Climate Justice Movement
    [sub-theme 33: “Organizational Struggles over the Natural Environment”]

     

That’s Interesting! Award 2016

Daniel Geiger & Anja Danner-Schröder (University of Hamburg, Germany):

It’s All about Timing: Toward a Relational Understanding of Time in Routine Performance

Abstract
The paper examines the role of time in routine performance. We argue that time is a central actor shaping the dynamics of organizational routines, whilst at the same time, time only becomes constituted in relation to routines.
Our study contributes to the understanding of time and routines in three main areas: the way time is translated within and through routines, the different temporal structures involved in shaping pattering work (the temporality of routines), and the understanding of time as a relational concept overcoming the traditional objective and subjective dualism.
 

SHORT LIST for the That's Interesting! Award 2016

  • Daniel Geiger & Anja Danner-Schröder: It’s all about Timing: Toward a Relational Understanding of Time in Routine Performance
    [sub-theme 03: “The Entrepreneurial Origins of Organizational Routines and their Impact on the Development of Organizations”]

  • Simon Oertel: Structure Determined by Imprinting: The Diffusion of Diversity Management in German Universities
    [sub-theme 53: “Power over Modern Universities”]

  • Hortense Blazsin: The Challenger Launch Decision, a Case Study of Organizational Deafness to Practical Wisdom
    [sub-theme 20: “Invisible/Silent Aspects of Change: The Role of Phronesis in Managing Organizational Change”]

     

That’s Interesting Award 2015

Wafa Ben Khaled & Jean-Pascal Gond (Cass Business School, City University London, UK):

How do external regulations shape the design of ethical tools in organisations? An open polity and sociology of compliance perspective

in: Human Relations, first published online on March 28, 2019, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0018726719828437

 

Abstract
Despite evidence that highlights their limited influence on ethical behavior in the workplace, ethical tools remain surprisingly popular among Multinational Corporations (MNCs). This paper addresses this contradiction by studying how ethical tools may be undermined at an early stage of their development. As a whole, this paper contributes to the analysis of ethical tools by clarifying some of the factors contributing to their ineffectiveness, by showing the influence of their designers’ attitudes on their ineffectiveness, and by bridging the study of ethical tools with the organizational literature on hypocrisy.

That’s Interesting! Award 2014

Russ Vince (School of Management, University of Bath, UK):

The Unconscious and Institutional Work

 

Abstract

What people bring to their institutional work is not only purposive. There are likely to be aspects to purposiveness that are unconscious, that are active despite being hidden from awareness. The interconnection of unconscious dynamics and purposive action is discussed in order to expose the emotional and political complexities of maintaining, disrupting and creating institutions. It is proposed that people’s agency can be embedded in institutional illogics, which are constructed in the ongoing interplay between unconscious fantasy and domination.

That’s Interesting! Award 2013

Katsuhiro Yamazumi (Kansai University, Japan):

Learning through Knotworking: An Activity-theoretical Study of Pedagogical Practices
Concerning the Two Great Earthquakes in Postwar Japan

 

Abstract

In this paper, case study analysis of learning and education from experiencing the two great earthquakes in Postwar Japan are carried out, based on the framework of cultural-historical activity theory. As the result of the analysis drawing on the concept of "knotworking", it became clear that through learning for disaster reconstruction in school, children encountered various "providers of learning", or partners, outside school to make connections and to create new, mutually supportive cultures and lives.

That’s Interesting! Award 2012

Kristianne Ervik (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway):

Deliberate Dyslexia as a De-signing Practice

 

Abstract

A strong focus on a need for crisis to make change happen can over-shadow efforts to keep change processes joyful and continuous. This paper introduces and describes the practice of "deliberate dyslexia": a deliberate misreading activity that creates new words and concepts. New concepts are iteratively explored through story and physical manifestation, such as the whining range or the worstshop. Language is treated as an inexhaustible resource of inspiration – it is sensemaking based on joy and abundance.

Selection process, rules and time schedule

  • The selection committee for this award comprises members of the EGOS Board, editorial members of the Organization Studies Board and members of the local Colloquium organizing committee. The selection committee is chaired by an EGOS Board member.
  • After the EGOS Colloquium in July, the sub-theme convenors nominate not more than one paper submitted to their sub-theme via the EGOS website by August 31 that year. Sub-theme convenors can decide not to nominate a paper.
  • Sub-theme convenors cannot nominate papers that they co-author. Members of the selection committee, the local Colloquium organizing committee and the EGOS Board are excluded from competing for this award.
  • From September to December, the selection committee choose the winning paper from the nominated papers. The decision will be made in early Spring, but not be announced before the next EGOS Colloquium in July.
  • The prize is awarded at the next EGOS Colloquium in July.