STRATEGIZING ACTIVITIES AND PRACTICES (SAP)

The Strategizing Activities and Practices (SAP) Interest Group invites intellectually bold and stimulating research for submission to the 83rd Academy of Management’s Annual Meeting 2023, scheduled in Boston, Massachusetts. Over the past few years, the SAP Interest Group has established an inclusive and diverse community that sheds light on the consequentiality of everyday practices and activities in organizations.

The theme of AOM 2023 is “Putting the Worker Front and Center” and aims to explore the significant shift in workplace power dynamics, examples being the growing shortages of talent and intensified labor activism. The theoretical underpinnings of SAP research provide particularly helpful lenses to apply here, such as the various strands of practice theory, paradox, and dialectics. First, SAP research builds on an ontology that puts day-to-day activities and practices center stage. Moreover, SAP research has been focused on the involvement of a much wider range of actors than just managers or strategists. This makes SAP research particularly well-placed to contribute new understandings of contemporary “wicked” challenges in the workplace, such as the rise of digital surveillance, dangerous or “toxic” working conditions, and an ignorance for worker well-being. Indeed, power dynamics and inequality have been square and central from the early beginnings of SAP research. The thematic stance of AOM 2023 is therefore particularly close to key questions of interest to practice-based management research in general and strategy-related practice research in particular. 

We encourage scholars to submit conceptual and empirical studies as well as methodological papers that focus on the specific conference theme, works that address other issues within the general domain of the SAP IG, and those that explore the intersections of the SAP IG with divisions such as STR, OMT, ODC, RM, TIM, CTO, ONE, and MOC. We also warmly invite symposia that seek to change the conversation on established scholarly approaches and develop new questions and ways of looking at management research from a practice perspective. Keeping the centrality of "Putting the Worker Front and Center" in mind, we strongly encourage submissions that focus on frontline workers, wellbeing in organization, and the inclusion of heterogeneous actors.

Paper and symposia submissions must be made through the AOM Submission Center (opens early December 2022) by Tuesday, 10  January 2023 at 17:00 ET (GMT-5/UTC-5). Please carefully review all the submission information and formatting instructions especially before submitting symposia. The scholarly program takes place on 7 August and 8 August 2023. Submitters are strongly encouraged to discuss potential symposia with Program Chair Fleur Deken.

Strong scholarship requires good reviews. Reviewing peers’ works is a fundamental process through which knowledge advances in a community. If you are submitting to the SAP Interest Group, please also consider reviewing for the IG! 

For more information on Strategizing Activities and Practices, please visit the SAP Interest Group website. Financial support for the conference registration fees and travel related expenses will be provided for a limited number of SAP member-accepted submissions if, due to constraints or circumstances, support to enable conference participation is needed.

Fleur Deken