We welcome submissions on any topic relevant to the ODC division’s focus on change and changing. We particularly encourage submissions that align with this year’s AOM theme: “Putting the Worker Front and Center". This theme spotlights tumultuous workplace dynamics in our post-pandemic world. Spurred by complex forces (de-globalization, the Great Resignation, anti-workism, etc.), labor shortages and growing worker activism are upending life in organizations and society. The 2023 theme calls for scholarly contributions that address the nature and causes of these shifts and that produce insights to move us towards “human resource sustainability” and healthy, effective organizations. To do this, we are urged to put workers “front and center”, not as objects of management efforts, but as knowing, active, choosing, resourceful subjects.

ODC scholars, practitioners, educators, and students are well suited to this moment – as the ODC domain statement demonstrates. The connective tissue of our inquiry is that of change and changing. We explore the strategies, processes, and outcomes of change at individual, group, organization, community, and institutional levels. Our essential values as a division have always held worker perspectives as central to building vibrant and humane organizations and communities.

We invite you to consider questions such as the following, adapted and extended, from the call of Peter Bamberger, 2023 AOM Program Chair:

• What approaches to organizing and change can facilitate human resource sustainability and organizational effectiveness and how will this vary by context

• How can the field of OD help build the organizational and community capabilities needed to address the grand challenges we face now and in future? How can we leverage OD theory, practice, and insights to render grand challenges more accessible and actionable so that solutions can be imagined and enacted? 
  

• What is the experience of work (or anti-workism) in different contexts and how is this related to institutional and organizational change in our post-pandemic landscape? 

• What new aims and forms of worker voice are emerging and how are these being used to catalyze, disrupt, or resist change in organizations? 

• To what extent and in what contexts might the apparent rising power of workers to drive or resist change in organizations be fragile or illusory? 
  

Paper and symposium sessions will take place Monday 7 August and Tuesday 8 August during the 2023 Annual Meeting.

To submit to the ODC Division, please review the submission instructions and refer to the section on information for papers and symposia. The submission deadline is Tuesday, 10  January 2023 at 17:00 ET (GMT-5/UTC-5), but earlier submissions are strongly encouraged. Before writing your submission, we also encourage you to  review the ODC Division domain and mission statements. Please contact the Program Chair,  Patrice Rosenthal with any questions about paper submissions and the Co-Chair, Michael Jarrett, with any questions about symposium proposals.

If you would like a paper to be considered for an award, please indicate it at the time of submission by making a note on the title as well as in the accompanying email to indicate the award for which you want the paper to be considered. Division Awards, some with an honorarium, will be given for the best paper in the following categories:

Papers based on a dissertation must be written by students as first author. Papers written about action research may include any study in which research and practice co-occur. The ODC Division also recognizes a Best Reviewer Award. All award winners will be celebrated at the ODC business meeting, which will be held during the 2023 meeting. Please refer to our website for additional detail on all awards.

Finally, we encourage all those submitting to the scholarly program to sign up as reviewers for ODC! We warmly thank all those who contribute to our community and the quality and vibrancy of our program by acting as reviewers for the ODC Division.

 Here’s to a vibrant AOM 2023. See you in Boston!