For the upcoming spring term 2012 we are looking for two tutors, who are willing to help us organizing the assessment lecture "BWL II". Your tasks would be: (1) supervision of the "OLAT-Forum"; (2) proof-reading of multiple choice questions; and (3) designing and revising slides. Therefore you would get 3 ECTS points and a lot of experiences. If you are interested please click here.

The Brown Bag Lunches are a series of informal meetings where junior and senior scholars interested in organizational theories and phenomena meet over lunch to discuss a current project or paper. Typically, one scholar presents his or her project/ paper informally (without PPP!) and afterwards a lively discussion ensues, providing the scholar with a great opportunity to receive feedback from likeminded peers. This time Hannah Trittin will present her work on: "„Too white, too German, too male“ - Reconstructing diversity as polyphony". If you are interested in this topic we would invite you to join us this Thursday, at 12:30 in the library at the Universitätsstrasse 84.

Just in time we managed to finalize the relaunch of our new website! We are looking forward to your feedback and comments!
Again best wishes for a happy, safe and prosperous 2012!

We wish you a peaceful holiday season and a happy prosperous new year. We really had a great time in 2011 and are now looking forward to 2012... CU there!

Last monday our chair had his annual christmas dinner. After we had made our own "Raeblilichter" (traditional swiss lanterns made of a beet) and had brewed our own mulled wine, we walked to the famous "Chäsalp", which is located at the top of the Züriberg. The price for the most beautiful lantern went to Stéphane Guérard and Shenghui Ma. Congrats!

On December 8th we celebrated together with the Champions League members, hot spiced wine and grilled sausages the end of the semester. It was great fun to have all of you together for the evening and we look forward to the next semester and its Champions League seminars.

We have completed our vision and mission statements. Over a period of two years we have met two times a year somewhere in the Swiss Alps to have one of our strategic meetings called "Magic Mountain" to discuss our aims and visions for the chair of organization and management. We are proud to present you the final result in the form of a poster, which summarizes our intensive, yet fruitful and manifold discussions. Because we really had a nice and productive time together, we are looking forward to the next "Magic Mountain", which takes place at the beginning of next year somewhere near Laax!

On Wednesday, November 23, 2011, 11 am - 1pm, Dirk Baecker (Zeppelin-University, Friedrichshafen) is going to visit our chair to talk about social systems theory within organization sciences and how organizations might look like in a society, that is highly influenced by the usage of computers and communication via internet ("next society"). If you would like to join his talk, just write Felix Langenmayr (mailto:felix.langenmayr<at>business.uzh.ch) a short email. In preparation for the session, we recommend reading: "The basic concepts of Luhmann's theory of social systems" (Seidl, 2005) and "Communication with computers, or how next society calls for an understanding of temporal form" (Baecker, 2007). For those, who are not yet involved in social systems theory, we would like to invite you as well to a short preparation session prior to the talk from 10-11 p.m. The talk as well the preparing session will take place at our seminar room (Universitätsstrasse 84; Room: UNK E 2).

After we had a great time with Dvora Yanow in May 2011, when she introduced us to organizational ethnography within her first seminar here in Zurich, we are all looking forward to this second seminar on organizational ethnography. It is designed to explore the ins and outs of writing papers in organizational ethnography. The seminar will take place from Nov 7th-11th, 2011. At this occasion, she will animate a discussion on the place of organizational ethnography in organization studies and will provide individual feedback on papers.

Dvora Yanow's research has been shaped by an overall interest in the communication of meaning in organizational and policy settings. She is the author of How does a policy mean? Interpreting policy and organizational actions (Georgetown University Press, 1996); Conducting interpretive policy analysis (Sage, 2000); and Constructing "race” and “ethnicity" in America: Category-making in public policy and administration (M E Sharpe, 2003, winner of the 2004 ASPA and 2007 Herbert A. Simon-APSA book awards) and co-editor of Knowing in organizations: A practice-based approach (M E Sharpe, 2003), interpretation and method: Empirical research methods and the interpretive turn (M E Sharpe, 2006), Organizational ethnography: Studying the complexities of everyday life (Sage, 2009), and the forthcoming Organizational spaces: Rematerializing the workaday world (Edward Elgar, 2010), as well as the new Routledge Book Series on Interpretive Methods. Current projects include comparative immigrant and integration policies, Dutch race-ethnic category-making, reflective practice and practice studies, policy frames and framing, science museums and the idea of 'science,' organizational museums in relation to state identity formation, and US Institutional Review Board and other research regulatory policies and practices.

Last week our doctoral candidates joined a workshop on "Pursuing an Academic Career across Countries", which was mainly organized by the chair of Uschi Backes-Gellner (UZH). Together with other postgraduates from Germany, Switzerland and the United States the participants presented and discussed their research projects. Next to this the workshop addressed the question "How to set up an international academic career?" The workshop was led by Edward Zajac (Kellogg School of Management) and supported by Shahzad Ansari (University of Cambridge), Uschi Backes-Gellner (University of Zurich), Peer C. Fiss (University of Southern California), Thomas Mellewigt (Freie Universität, Berlin), Kim-Chi Trinh (National University of Singapore) and Anja Tuschke (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich). At this point we would like to thank everybody, who was involved in the organization of this extraordinary workshop!