Acknowledgement of the complexity of contemporary organisational environments marked by wicked crises, polarisation, fragmentation, and disorder, co-emerging with radically new developments in emerging technology, including artificial intelligence (Phillips, 2026), has stimulated calls for re-evaluations and reorientations of the role and direction of organisation theory and scholarship (see Meyer, 2025; Zilber & Quattrone, 2025). These developments radically challenge conceptions of the nature and role of theory (e.g. facts, inference, language); the viability of epistemic virtues (e.g. abstraction, rigour, reflexivity); the epistemic apparatus involved in theory production (e.g. methods, causality, mechanisms, boundaries); as well as the orientation of the scientific community (e.g. theorist versus activist).
The event organisers particularly welcome participants in the early stages of their career (PhD students, post-doctoral researchers and assistant professors), in addition to organisation theory scholars who would like to deepen their engagement with organisation theory and contribute to intellectual exchange in the field.
All research that addresses and seeks to contribute to forward-looking organisation theory, broadly construed, to encompass a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches, is particularly welcome.
Date: Tuesday 8 - Thursday 10 September 2026
Place: The University of Liverpool
Cost: Free to attend
Key dates:
For more details regarding faculty and submission process, please consult the detailed Call for Papers or visit the workshop website at https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/management/conferences-and-events/the-liverpool-organisation-theory-workshop/.
