2nd Organization Journal Virtual Conference: 

The Critical Journal of Organization, Theory and Society

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The second Organization conference takes place at a moment when the contours of power, resistance, and alternative possibilities have become simultaneously more visible, more elusive, and… more strange. In worlds marked by deepening inequality, ecological breakdown, and authoritarian resurgence, there is also something quite surreal in how the world is responding to the lack of progress in obvious social, political and environmental crises. Climate change has largely disappeared from the news, wars, even genocide, are normalized, and many small progressive wins are, again, challenged.

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Our journal has been in the forefront of critical organizational debates for the last 30 years espousing a plurality of perspectives. In times, where power is ever more visibly and spectacularly playing with notions of the real, unreal, and surreal, there is more pressing need to challenge the fundamental assumptions and investigate the impact of these categories on individuals, organizations, organizing, and communities.

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While critiquing the underlying factors to these crises remains central, we in the Organization community have become increasingly attentive to the limits of critique alone. Our debates have to combine the possibilities for organizing and activism, hence we encourage authors to explore this interplay. We invite the international critical management and organization studies community to come together to explore, theorize, and learn from organizing that confronts the Real of power, engages the ghostly Unreal, and mobilizes the Surreal as a resource toward more solidary and livable futures. 
 

As a journal Organization champions greater connection between theorizing and activism, for instance through its Speaking Out and Acting Up sections, but also through our involvement in initiatives such as CMS InTouch. Accordingly, this conference is meant to be sustainable and inclusive through its online, accessible, and boundary-breaking format. Building on the inaugural conference’s commitment to praxis-oriented critical scholarship, this conference invites participants to engage theoretically and pragmatically with three interrelated registers of contemporary organizing: the Real, the Unreal, and the Surreal.