Professor David Seidl and Team

LinkedIn

Call for Applications: Strategy-as-Practice Community Day 2024 on "Practicing Strategy at the Crossroads: Navigating Transformation Through time, space and people" at EGOS2024

Meet the SAP community again in person on July 3rd, prior to the main EGOS colloquium in Milan for interactive sessions and workshops to catch up with recent conversations in the SAP field and to develop your own work with leading SAP scholars.

Apply until April 30th at https://tinyurl.com/n3ak3b6 (as part of the registration process for the colloquium).
You can find further information on the event here (https://tinyurl.com/23yehsv9) or by reaching out to Christoph Brielmaier, Christian Bruck, Robin Engelbach, Rebecca Lu, or Annabelle Mueller.

Our esteemed panelists and facilitators this year include:
Blagoy Blagoev, Gary Burke, Katharina Cepa, Charlotte Cloutier, Leonhard Dobusch, Martin Friesl, Stefanie Habersang, Claus D. Jacobs, Renate Kratochvil, Davide Nicolini, Omid Omidvar, Sotirios Paroutis, Igor Pyrko, Tania Räcker, Birgit Renzl, Violetta Splitter, Eero Vaara, and Basak Yakis-Douglas.

See you soon 

Just before Easter we had the great pleasure to welcome Dr. Felix Langenmayr, Head of Business Transformation at 20 Minuten Group, to our Lecture «Organisation und Führung» (“Organization and Leadership”) at the University of Zurich.

After a short introduction and company presentation, Felix provided the more than 200 students with practical insights on the professionalization of management and organization. In particular, Felix shared how TX Group AG deals with market challenges by engaging in continuous business transformation efforts that allow the organization to stay on top of the complex business environment. Providing insights from his longtime experience with business transformation at TX Group, Felix explained how different types of consulting can help in such transformation processes.

With his presentation, Felix provided students with first-hand insights on the professionalization of organizational transformation, highlighting the role of in-house, hybrid, and external consulting in this regard.

We thank Felix, who is a Chair alum and will always be part of our dear Chair family, for joining our lecture and for illustrating so vividly the content of the second module of the course with his experience as consultant and business transformation expert.

It is fantastic news that within just one week another article by our (former) chair members Violetta Splitter's and David Seidl's, in collaboration with Richard Whittington, has been published in the Strategic Management Journal. Make sure to dive into this open access article during the Easter holidays!

Title: "Getting heard? How employees learn to gain senior management attention in inclusive strategy processes"

Abstract: Recent trends toward inclusive strategy processes raise the issue of how employees acquire the discursive competence necessary to gain senior management attention. Building on the emergent dynamic attention-based view's (DABV) emphasis on communicative interaction, we ethnographically track an inclusive strategy process in a large insurance company. We find that employees typically failed to gain CEO attention because they lacked the discursive competence to integrate their operational knowledge with the CEO's corporate themes. Employees acquired this competence by both experiential and vicarious learning. The CEO promoted employee learning more effectively by specific coaching than by generic coaching. We contribute primarily to the DABV by showing how interactions are sites for learning as well as communications and that communication channels can be both expandable and transparent.

Link to Study: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smj.3602

Exciting news! Theresa Langenmayr’s, David Seidl’s, and Violetta Splitter’s latest academic article has been published in the Strategic Management Journal!  Check out the details below:

Title: "Interdiscursive struggles: Managing the co-existence of the conventional and open strategy discourse"

 Abstract: “Open strategy” is a new macro discourse on strategy that differs fundamentally from the conventional strategy discourse. In this paper, we examine how actors deal with the co-existence of the two discourses, given their conflicting nature. For this purpose, we draw on a longitudinal, in-depth case study of an international finance firm that introduced open strategy alongside the conventional strategy discourse that had shaped their strategy work in the past. We find that strategy actors deal with interdiscursive tensions by enacting meta-discursive practices that regulate the mobilization of the two strategy discourses. Furthermore, we identify power as an important driver and necessary resource in enacting these practices. With these findings, we contribute to the open strategy literature and the literature on organization and strategy discourse.

Link to Study: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smj.3599

Welcome back from your holidays to FS24! We hope you all had a great start to the new year.

We are looking forward to a fresh start on campus and to seeing many of you in our seminar Qualitative Forschungsmethoden and our lectures BWL II and Organisation und Führung (undergraduate level) as well as in Organization Theories (master level).
If you are interested in writing your thesis at our chair, please register for the information event on March 27th, 2024 (15-16h) by sending an email to Kalliopi Vagias.
On May 27-30, 2024, we offer a Distinguished Scholars Seminar with Davide Nicolini (University of Warwick - Warwick Business School, UK) on „Current Topics in OT and Strategy – Practice Theory“. 

Just in time for the new year, our new postdoc arrived at the chair: Dr. Zoe Jonassen.

In the past two years, Zoe was a postdoctoral fellow at NYU Stern School of Business. During her time in New York, Zoe worked closely with Batia Wiesenfeld and Kate Kellogg on studying the role of collective frustration and anxiety on team coordination around algorithmic tools and on strategies to foster health equity through remote patient monitoring together with the HiBRID Lab at NYU School of Medicine led by Devin Mann.

Zoe’s research interests evolve around emotions, teams and novel technologies. She currently works on her Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF return grant project: „Augmenting versus hindering? The role of emotions for collective human-AI decision-making“.

We look forward to new inspiration through Zoe and her research and hope that she will have an equally inspiring and productive time at our chair. Welcome, Zoe! It is a pleasure to have you here! 

Today was Christoph Brielmaier’s last day at our office. For the past four months, Christoph, originally from the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, has visited our Chair as researcher in residence.

Dear Christoph, thank you for your visit! It was a great pleasure having you here and we look forward to continuing working with you and seeing you again in person for our OpenStrategy Workshop in June. Meanwhile we wish you all the best for your exciting research projects!

Last weekend, we held our cherished annual Winter Magic Mountain offsite, this year set against the picturesque backdrop of Meiringen.

Throughout the offsite, we blended interactive workshops and social activities. In the mornings and evenings we dedicated time to reflect on our recent and future teaching activities or finalized the Chair’s vision and mission for 2033. We further engaged in enriching dialogues about inviting future guest speakers, and organized our community engagement. Additionally, we delved into proactive discussions for example about opportunities and challenges in research and teaching, with a keen focus on AI.

During the day we had a lot of fun and created unforgettable memories, whether skiing down the slopes, hiking through breathtaking landscapes, sharing meals on the mountainside, or cooking and enjoying self-made pasta during cozy evenings with the Extended Chair Family.

It was a very enjoyable, productive and fun weekend. Eagerly anticipating, we already look forward to reconvening for our next Magic Mountain in the summer. 

What an eventful day at the office yesterday! Not only did we successfully conduct our Change Management exam, but we also had the pleasure of welcoming back our esteemed former chair member, Shenghui Ma for a visit. The day continued with a meeting with the Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. team, giving us great insight into their recent Open Strategy project. Additionally, we seized the opportunity to re-celebrate David's birthday, spreading extra cheer. Ultimately, we finalized our arrangements for our Magic Mountain offsite in Meiringen starting this afternoon. 

Here's to many more days filled with learning, celebration, and team spirit!

As the year draws to a close, we would like to thank Tania Räcker for her three-year term as Membership Chair of the Strategizing Activities and Practices (SAP) Interest Group at the Academy of Management.

During her term, and together with the hard-working Membership Committee, Tania was able to:
- Enhance SAP conference engagement
- Expand year-round member engagement
- Strengthen inclusion and diversity in the IG
- Increase IG visibility
- Foster the SAP brand

We are grateful and proud that Tania represented our team in this role at the vibrant SAP@AOM community and are excited that Benjamin Grossmann-Hensel now continues as Chair representative in his role as new SAP Secretary.

The Chair of Organization and Management wishes you a peaceful holiday season and a happy, prosperous New Year! 

Today we held our final lecture in Change Management and have thus concluded the lecture period for this semester. 

The festive season gives us now the chance to look back on a year with numerous highlights - the last of which were gatherings within our team and with our colleagues of the faculty to celebrate and exchange on the successful year. We would like to thank everyone with whom we have been in contact and who helped us to jointly shape the year 2023.

We are very much looking forward to our new teaching portfolio and new forms of academic exchange in 2024!

... and If you have not had the chance to take a look at our Christmas card: Here it is!

As Robin Engelbach of our Chair has taken a leading role in organizing the Open Strategy Network, we are delighted that so many of you have re-connected with or newly joined the OSN - it is great to see the OSN community growing and flourishing! 

In the OSN December newsletter attention has been drawn on two upcoming Open Strategy events our Chair is also involved in: 

The Oxford & Zurich Open Strategy Workshop 
The workshop on Open Strategy: Taking stock and moving forward with many distinguished experts in the field will take place in Zurich from July 1-2, 2024, with no participation fee and a joint train ride to the EGOS colloquium. The submission deadline for an extended abstract of up to 2000 words is January 25, 2024, via os@business.uzh.ch.

EGOS Subtheme 36: Diversity and Inclusion in Strategizing

The subtheme organized by Theresa Langenmayr, Violetta Splitter, and Janne Tienari is part of the 40th EGOS (European Group for Organizational Studies) colloquium in Milan (IT) taking place from July 4-6, 2024 and aiming to bring together scholars who conduct research on diversity and inclusion in top management teams (TMT) or participation in strategy making (Open Strategy). The deadline for submissions is January 9, 2024, via the EGOS website.

We are very much looking forward to seeing you at both events.

The last two weeks, our team had the joy of embracing the festive spirit with two wonderful events. 

We enjoyed the Chair Christmas Apéro & Dinner, a delightful gathering with the extended Chair Family that brought everyone together and a lot of joy to the team.

We also participated in the annual End-of-Year Dinner of the UZH Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics at the University of Zurich. The event was a splendid opportunity for personal reconnection and celebration among faculty members. The evening was marked by great conversations, a shared sense of accomplishment, and a festive atmosphere that truly encapsulated the spirit of the season.

We wish all our colleagues a peaceful holiday season and a happy and successful new year ahead.

We are delighted to announce that our chair member Theresa Langenmayr and two of our former researchers in residence have been elected to leadership roles within The Strategic Management Society for the upcoming year.

Theresa Langenmayr will fill the Associate Program Chair role for the Strategy Practice Interest Group
Martha Eugenia Reyes-Sarmiento and Peter Smith will fill a Representative-at-Large role on the Strategy Practice Interest Group

We congratulate and thank them for their efforts and for enriching the Strategy as Practice community.

We are very proud to announce that our colleague Violetta Splitterreceived a call from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

With both joy and a touch of sadness, we bid farewell to Violetta, who has been an integral part of Davids Chair for over 14 years. Starting in March, Violetta will embark on a new journey as Fellow of St Peter's College, University of Oxford and Associate Professor for Strategy at Saïd Business School.

We are immensely proud of Violetta and extend our best wishes for this new chapter in her academic career. However, her presence will be greatly missed here in Zurich. Our heartfelt thanks to you, Violetta, for the enriching time we have spent together, your dedication to teaching, the collaborative research projects, and the countless memorable experiences during our Magic Mountains and team events.

On the other hand we are delighted that our collaborative efforts on various topics will continue, with ongoing regular interactions. Violetta, you are always warmly welcomed at the Chair and our future events.

It is our pleasure to announce an exciting subtheme at next year’s EGOS (European Group for Organizational Studies) on "Diversity and Inclusion in Strategizing – Integrating TMT and Participation Research" organized by Theresa Langenmayr, Violetta Splitter and Janne Tienari.

Link to the subtheme: https://www.egos.org/jart/prj3/egos/main.jart?rel=de&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1662944489704&subtheme_id=1669874217135

Today, we are overjoyed to announce that our esteemed chair member, Theresa Langenmayr, has successfully defended her PhD in Open Strategy. 

Her remarkable insights have contributed greatly to the advancement of this emerging research field, and we are thrilled that Theresa will continue her journey with us as a Post-Doc. 

We wholeheartedly wish her all the best in her future career and are excited about what is yet to come.

Congratulations Theresa!