With two of its three research focuses — Organizing for Digital Transformation and Platformization, as well as Organizing for Creativity and Innovation — the Institute for Organization was represented at this year's EGOS Colloquium, the largest European conference for organizational research.

The EGOS Colloquium provided inspiring and constructively challenging discussions, enabling us to reflect on ongoing research, question viewpoints, and open up to new ideas. Moreover, excellence was not only the scientific guiding theme this year but also the maxim of the social program: the visit to the Pirelli HangarBicocca, a leading institution for contemporary art, and the privilege of the EGOS dinner overshadowed by Anselm Kiefer's The Seven Heavenly Palaces could not have been more impressive. We thank the substream conveners, conference organizers, and all discussion partners!

To our individual conference contributions:

Sara Maric spoke on “Remixing logics, shaking up society: Analyzing platformization from a cultural institutionalist perspective,” a research work conducted together with Elke Schüßler (Leuphana University, Lüneburg) and Leonhard Dobusch (University of Innsbruck), analyzing the current impacts of platformization from a cultural-institutionalist perspective.

Robert M. Bauer presented “Revisiting exchange: Digital platforms as infrastructures for reciprocal, non-reciprocal and unilateral exchange,” an approach developed jointly with Elke Schüßler (Leuphana University, Lüneburg), which enables the analysis of the integral interplay of different forms of exchange — more or less reciprocal, more or less consensual, and more or less discrete (i.e., distinguishable and attributable) — in the digital economy.

Benjamin Schiemer spoke about methodological insights from creativity research. “Qualitative Researcher-role-in-the-making: The Value of Enduring Liminality” — developed together with Sunny Mosangzi Xu — highlights the value of extended liminality (i.e., remaining in transitions) for qualitative empirical research.

A big thank you to Dr. Reinhard Nöbauer, CEO of voestalpine High Performance Metals Division, and Christoph Lipinski from vidaflex and betreuerinnen.at for visiting JKU and providing extremely valuable insights as part of our redesigned course Introduction to Organization!

Dr. Reinhard Nöbauer discussed the challenges faced by a global sales organization that necessitate constant adjustments. In particular, he explained how it was possible to address the resulting changes through sustainably managed organizational development and use them to improve the company’s competitive position. Christoph Lipinski shared about the founding of the brokerage platform betreuerinnen.at, which implements a new approach to union activities and serves as an effective measure to address the care crisis while improving working conditions for 24-hour caregivers.

Both guest lectures are part of the relaunched of the bachelor course Introduction to Organization, which has been completely revamped this summer semester. The new format integrates teaching more closely with current developments in business and society, as well as with the institute’s research areas: Organizing for Creativity and Innovation, Organizing for Digital Transformation and Scale, and Organizing for Sustainability and Societal Transformation. Moreover, we are linking academic teaching more closely with management practice by featuring two high-caliber guest lectures on a selected topic each semester—in this semester: (Re-)Shaping Organizations—each exploring the topic from different perspectives.

Therefore, our sincere thanks again to Dr. Reinhard Nöbauer and Christoph Lipinski for their invaluable support in our efforts to provide excellent academic education!