Second Summer Workshop 1411

Organization Studies
The Third Organization Studies Summer Workshop:
‘Organization Studies as Applied Science:
The Generation and Use of Academic Knowledge
about Organizations’
7–9 June 2007, Crete, Greece
Convenors:
Paula Jarzabkowski, Aston Business School and AIM, UK
Susan Mohrman, University of Southern California, USA
Andreas Georg Scherer, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Keynote Speakers:
Helga Nowotny Wissenschaftszentrum Wien, Austria, co-author of Rethinking
Science
Sara L. Rynes University of Iowa, USA, Editor of the Academy of Management
Journal
Richard Whitley University of Manchester, UK, author of The Intellectual and
Social Organization of the Sciences

About the Workshop

The Organization Studies Summer Workshop is an annual activity, launched in June
2005, to facilitate high-quality scholarship in organization studies. Its primary aim is
to advance cutting-edge research on important topics in the field by bringing together
in a Greek island, in early summer, a small and competitively selected group of
scholars, who will have the opportunity to interact and share insights in a stimulating
and scenic environment.
Following on the tremendous success of the first two Organization Studies Summer
Workshops, held in Santorini and Mykonos, we are happy to announce that the Third
Workshop will take place at Perle Hotel (http://www.perle-spa.com), Chania, Crete, on
7–9 June 2007. Crete (http://www.crete.tournet.gr/), a legendary island, renowned for
its spectacular gorges and mountainous landscapes, picturesque villages, sandy beaches,
and ancient history, will provide an ideal setting for Workshop participants to relax and
engage in authentic dialogue. With this Workshop we aim to create a setting in which
the juices of intellectual creativity will naturally flow. The conference venue is very
close to Chania (http://www.chania.gr/), undoubtedly the most beautiful of Cretan cities,
to which there are several daily flights from Athens as well as chartered flights from
Organization international destinations. More about the practicalities and costs of the Workshop will
Studies appear later on the journal’s website (www.egosnet.org/os).
27(9): 1411–1413
ISSN 0170–8406
Copyright © 2006 About the Topic
SAGE Publications
(London, The academic community has long been concerned about the nature of knowledge
Thousand Oaks, produced in management and organization theory and its application to practice. While
CA & New Delhi)

www.egosnet.org/os DOI: 10.1177/0170840606070945

1412 Organization Studies 27(9)

academic management knowledge is not produced in a vacuum, as it arises from the

study of management problems and issues, academic theory and management practice
have canonically been seen as separate endeavours. While academics are usually
concerned with methodological rigour, managers seek the practical relevance of
knowledge. These concerns, which are grounded in the different ways in which
knowledge is produced and consumed by management academics and by practising
managers, are reflected in the wider social science domain. For example, Pelz suggests
that social scientific knowledge lends itself to three different types of use in practice:
instrumental, conceptual and symbolic uses.1 Instrumental use is the direct application
of theory to practice, suggesting a clear link between theoretical principles and their
relevance to practical action. Conceptual use highlights the use of theoretical
knowledge as a way to think about or represent the practical world that does not imply
a direct correlation between theoretical principles and practical action. Symbolic use
highlights the political nature of knowledge and its potential adoption in order to
legitimize preferred practical action, frequently in ceremonial ways that do not imply
any corresponding commitment to applying theory in practice.
These earlier studies draw out the complex nature of the relationship between
academic theory and practical action, based on an ontological assumption that academic
theory provides a precedent for practical action. That is, that academic theory provides
a sufficient representation of the practical world that it may be consumed by
practitioners in instrumental (direct application to action), conceptual (thinking prior
to action) or symbolic (justification of action) ways. More recent studies conceptualize
the social production of knowledge from a different ontological basis. They explain
two different modes and purposes of knowledge production and consumption in
academic and practical communities, referred to as Mode 1 and Mode 2.2 Briefly, Mode
1 knowledge production may be considered the traditional, disciplinary-based forms
of knowledge production and consumption inside universities and academic
communities, which tend to have relatively homogeneous views of what constitutes
appropriate forms of knowledge. Mode 2 deals with knowledge production and
consumption in the wider social domain, drawing upon and applied to the solving of
practical problems in cross-disciplinary, heterogeneous communities from a range of
organizations, not only universities. We may thus understand Mode 2 knowledge as
arising from the co-production of knowledge between multiple groups in society,
including universities, who have different objectives and needs in the consumption of
that knowledge.
The articulation of these quite different concepts of the social sciences has fuelled
further debate in the management and organization community about the relevance of
management theory to policy and practice.3 Increasingly, these debates call for
management scholars to develop research designs that can operationalize the
relationship between management knowledge and practical action empirically. For
example, research councils fund research that incorporates practitioners in the design
of the research, not only in the dissemination of its results,4 while professional
doctorates have also grown to satisfy the knowledge production and consumption needs
of practising professionals. While much existing empirical research is based on
ontological assumptions that academic knowledge precedes practical action, for
example examining the extent to which current academic knowledge is relevant to
practice, increasingly research is being designed with specific regard for the nature and
objectives of co-produced knowledge and the different ways that it is consumed by
different audiences. This Workshop seeks to address the relationship between academic
theory and practical action in novel ways that can address the different assumptions
underlying knowledge production and consumption.
The Workshop will be limited to about 50 papers to ensure in-depth discussion. We
welcome both theoretical and empirical papers that demonstrate rigorous analyses and
approaches. Papers could consider, but are not restricted to, the following topics on
the generation and use of academic knowledge about organizations:
Third Summer Workshop 1413

1. Epistemological issues concerning what counts as valid knowledge (including

aspects such as truth, objectivity vs. subjectivity, etc.);
2. Methodological issues about how valid knowledge is generated;
3. Praxeological issues about how valid knowledge is used in practice;
4. Sociological issues regarding the social settings in which academic knowledge is
produced and the forms that knowledge traffic between academics and practitioners
takes; and
5. Critical issues regarding the political nature of knowledge and the various interests
that are served during the process of knowledge production and application
(including aspects such as power, dependency, legitimacy, etc.);
6. Learning in terms of teaching management students; how and why understanding
the relationship between knowledge production and consumption might inform our
teaching practices.

In keeping with the topic of the Workshop, we encourage contributors to go beyond a

high-level re-statement of the issues of various modes of research, and to ensure that
their treatments provide examples that jointly address the topics of practice and theory
and provide a rich context for discussion and debate.

Special Issue of Organization Studies

The Workshop will be followed by a Special Issue of Organization Studies on this
topic, which will be published in 2009. While we anticipate submissions from the
workshop, participation in the workshop is not a condition for submission to the Special
Issue, which will be separately advertised in the journal.

Submissions
Interested participants must submit to the Editor-in-Chief (OSeditor@alba.edu.gr) an
abstract of no more than 1000 words for their proposed contribution plus a brief
biographical note by 31 January 2007. The submission must be made via email and
it must be a Word attachment. It should contain authors’ names, institutional
affiliations, and email and postal addresses, while the subject matter line of the email
should indicate the title of the Workshop. Authors will be notified of acceptance or
otherwise by 28 February 2007. Papers should be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief by
15 May 2007 and will be uploaded to the journal’s website.

Notes
1 D. C. Pelz (1978) ‘Some expanded perspectives on use of social science in public
policy’ in M. Yiner and S. J. Cutler (eds), Major social issues: A multidisciplinary
view, pp. 346–357, New York, Free Press.
2 M. Gibbons et al. (1994) The new production of knowledge: The dynamics of
science and research in contemporary societies, London, Sage.
3 For example, Academy of Management Journal (2001), ‘Special research forum:
Knowledge transfer between academics and practitioners’, 44(2), pp. 340–440;
Academy of Management Conference (2004), Creating Actionable Knowledge,
New Orleans, August; British Journal of Management Vol 12/1 (2001), ‘Bridging
the Relevance Gap’, special issue.
4 For example, EU 6th Framework, Advanced Institute of Management, ESRC;
recent calls from the US National Science Foundation to fund research jointly
proposed and implemented by academics and corporations.