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The 31st EGOS Colloquium will take place from July 2–4, 2015 in Athens, Greece, and together with Georg von Krogh (ETH Zürich) and Richard Whittington (Oxford University) I will be convenor of a sub-theme on “Open Organizations for an Open Society? Practicing Openness in Innovation, Strategy and Beyond“. Please find the Call for Short Papers below, submission deadline is January 12, 2015:
Over the past decade, ‘openness’ has become one of the most imperative virtues of modern organizations. Originating in the field of open source software development (Raymond, 2001), we can observe increasing demands for all kinds of openness in fields such as open innovation (Chesbrough, 2006), open strategy (Whittington et al., 2011), open science (David, 1998) or open government (Janssen et al., 2012).
All these different ‘open paradigms’ share – and fuel – hopes of combining greater efficiency with more inclusive and transparent forms of organizing. In the context of open innovation, for instance, the literature anticipates technological (e.g. reduced production costs) and marketing (e.g. positive effects on reputation) benefits (Henkel et al., 2014). Open strategy, in turn, promises access to dispersed knowledge, with some even speaking of “democratizing strategy” (Stieger et al., 2013). In the realm of open government and open science, expected benefits are often connected with access to all kinds of open data (e.g. Molloy, 2011).
However, studies of openness in organizations also point to a number of potential weaknesses and pitfalls such as loss of knowledge and intellectual property (e.g. Henkel 2006; von Hippel & von Krogh, 2003). So, on the level of organizational practices, we need more research that addresses the challenges implied by greater openness in terms of organizational structures, boundaries and culture. And on a broader level, the boom of openness, as recently pointed out by Nathaniel Tkacz (2012), is curious within a supposedly already-open society (Popper, 1971). Why is there such a demand for openness and what does this tell us about society at large?
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