CRITICAL MANAGEMENT STUDIES (CMS)  

The Critical Management Studies (CMS) division welcomes Professional Development Workshop (PDW) proposals anchored in this year’s Academy of Management Annual Meeting Theme: Putting the Worker Front and Center, Boston 4–8th August 2023. This year’s theme foregrounds our role, as a multidisciplinary and transnational group of CMS scholars, in exploring, exposing and explaining local and transnational power structures that define and determine workers’ social realities across time, organizations, institutions, geographies, societies and other contexts. 

At CMS, our overarching concern is with workers’ struggles, solidarities and connectedness. Hence, we seek to foster debate, and collectively identify, initiate as well as inform potential mechanisms for eliminating the diverse forms of social injustice that underpin workers’ experiences across the globe. From a CMS perspective, the following questions and issues lay at the heart of Putting the Worker Front and Center, that PDWs may explore, among others: 

• Conceptual interpretations, and operationalizations of Putting the Worker Front and Center locally and transnationally. 
• Theoretical and empirical dimensions and processes of Putting the Worker Front and Center (or not) with a focus on how such aspects may relate to e.g., (self-)exploitation of the worker in the context of neoliberal organizational and social contexts (e.g., exploring ethics of care at work and work-life balance among others). 
• Engagement with systemic and pressing issues of gender, racial, LGBTQIA+, climate and epistemic injustices among other structural forces that marginalize, discriminate against, and oppress workers across time and contexts. 
• Issues of activism, performativity, reflexivity, voice, representation, praxis, phronesis, and parrhesia as they relate to the philosophical and methodological concerns of CMS members. 
• Diverse historical times, (alternative) organizations and economies, institutions, geographies, societies and other contexts within which workers’ social realities – lived experiences, conditions and wellbeing– are embedded and shaped. 
• Agents and actors including coalitions linked to workers’ struggles, solidarities and connectedness, and ultimately, processes of Putting the Worker Front and Center (or not). 

Consistent with the ethos of CMS, we will select PDW proposals embracing the following four dimensions: 

• Innovative – Experiment with novel processes, models, formats, ideas and technology that challenge and potentially enhance or replace dominant ways of understanding the social realities of workers, and both formal and informal arrangements that dictate and define such lived experiences. We invite innovative PDW that facilitate (collective) acquisition of novel information, skills and competences, methodological and technical approaches, and raise issues or questions of pertinence to a better understanding of, and engaging with workers’ struggles, solidarities and connectedness  
• Inclusive – Invite, foster and accommodate the participation of Ph.D. students, early career scholars, junior faculty, and the ‘(in)visible’ others traditionally or routinely marginalized in one way or the other.  
• Interactive – Offer space and opportunities to all participants for active engagement and interaction by cultivating, sharing, comparing, debating, discussing and testing alternative viewpoints pertaining to Putting the Worker Front and Center. 
• Integrative – Foster and bridge connections within the CMS community and extend such relations to other AoM Divisions, thus enabling the transfer of intellectual and experiential phenomena within and beyond CMS. 

CMS Research and Transformative Action 

We invite CMS scholars to propose PDWs that extend the reach of our research and enhance our potential for transformative action. 

Transformative Critical Management Education and Learning 

We welcome PDW proposal that inform and innovate our pedagogical approaches and methodologies and illuminate Putting the Worker Front and Center. 

Transformative academic praxis 

We invite PDW proposals that explore how we can transform ourselves as ‘Workers’ and equip us to facilitate and develop a more positive transformation of (our) teaching praxis, for both our benefit and that of societies. 

PDW Formats 

The AOM 2023 meeting will be On-site in-person, with Post-Meeting Content. The CMS division welcomes PDW proposals with any of the following formats: Workshops, case studies, roundtable discussions and panel discussions. 

Developing proposals 

You may find useful the PDW Guidelines for Submission, along with A Guide for Creating and Managing a Good Professional Development Workshop. We encourage proposals that develop conversations with other divisions, to build connections and a critical community across the AOM. As such, please indicate any other divisions to which your PDW would be of interest. 

If you would like to discuss a potential proposal, you are welcome to email us. The submission deadline is  Tuesday, 10 January 2023 at 17:00 ET (GMT-5/UTC-5). Please note that PDW sessions will be taking place on 4 Friday August and 5 Saturday August. Scholarly Program sessions will be taking place 7 Monday August and 8 Tuesday August.