Digiera19: Organizing in the era of digital technology Monte Verità Ascona, Switzerland, June 12-15, 2019 |
Conference website | http://www.digiera.ethz.ch/ |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=digtech19 |
Poster | download |
Submission deadline | January 18, 2019 |
Conference Introduction
This conference aims to bring together management scholars, organization scientists, computer scientists, philosophers, and scientists from other relevant disciplines to examine the imminent questions that digital technologies and machine intelligence raise for our society. Its program includes keynote speeches, presentations, professional development workshops, and panel discussions. The goal of the organizers is to provide a platform for scholars and practitioners whose work is or will be influenced by digital technologies to jointly discuss the future of management and organization science.
Conference theme
The new century has witnessed tremendous development in digital technologies and a renaissance in artificial intelligence. In particular, machine learning — a subdomain of artificial intelligence — now provides computers with the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed by humans. Machines have achieved near-human abilities in many cognitive tasks (e. g., image recognition), and even super-human abilities in others (e. g., AlphaGo Zero in the Go Games). In practice, industries across the board are experiencing the integration of digital technologies in areas ranging from the automation of mundane tasks to the generation of creative insights. In natural science, machine learning as a tool has found application across various fields, from astronomy to biology. In everyday life, machine learning applications appear in many areas, including email spam detectors, software games, personal assistants, search engines, and automatic translation. Digital technologies and machine intelligence are becoming a defining feature of our time.
However, there is a disconnect between the encompassing influence of digital technologies and machine intelligence on practices and the state of management and organization research. On the one hand, digital technologies and machine intelligence have impacted the modern workplace and stimulated the evolution of new models of value creation. They challenge existing forms of organizing, along with our understanding of power and authority. On the other hand, management research has not developed any new theories that explain or predict how digital technologies and machine intelligence are changing modern organizations, nor has it incorporated them in developing such theories. Given such a discrepancy, we call for research that addresses an important issue in the field of management and organization — how shall we better incorporate digital technologies and machine intelligence in theory building and empirical methods?
Submission Guidelines
We call for papers that fit within the context of the general theme or one of the track themes. Submissions may be either a summary of a completed paper or
a proposal of future work. They should be prepared in a concise way to encourage discussion and participation. Submissions are limited to 8 pages (4000 words, up to 6 pages for the main document, including chart, graphs, diagrams, and up to 2 pages of references). All submissions must have a title and an abstract (within 125 words), for inclusion in the conference program.
Please follow the Academy of Management Journal’s Style Guide for figures, tables, and references. Submissions should not be previously published or accepted for publication by any publisher or organization.
We follow a double-blind review process, which requires authors to remove all identifiers from their submissions. Each submission will be reviewed by two anonymous reviewers. Evaluation criteria include the structure of the paper, the rigor of the methods and analysis, the contribution to theory and practice, and the relevance to the conference theme.
Given the intimate size of our conference, we ask all authors who submit to also review two papers. Through our submission system, participants can bid on at least two papers that they are interested in reviewing. The system will allocate review assignments according to indicated interests.
Track themes
Track A. Algorithms and organizations
• New forms of organizing
• Problem solving with machine learning
• Machine learning application in management and organization research
• Decision making algorithms
Track B. Technology and organizational design for knowledge creation
• Management of interdependencies of digital technologies
• Complementarities between old and new technologies in organizations
• Talent development in the era of digital technology
• Knowledge system integrating human and machine intelligence
Track C. The changing meaning of firm boundaries
• Crowdsourcing within and beyond firm boundaries
• Design and implementation of organizational networks
• The implication of machine learning for collaboration and coordination
• Management of a digital, boundary-less workforce
Track D. Online communities
• Leadership, power, and control mechanisms in online communities
• Digital economy and the user communities
• New business models in the era of digital technology
Track E. Ethics in the digital era
• Ethical issues associated with machine learning in organizations
• Human-machine interaction and integration
• Humanity in the era of digital technology
• Human emotions and machines
Organizing committee
- Nina Geilinger, Vivianna Fang He, Georg von Krogh
Chair of Strategic Management and Innovation, Department of Management, Technology and Economics, ETH Zurich
- Ce Zhang
Systems Group, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich
Keynote Speakers
❖ Maryam Alavi, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
❖ Samer Faraj, McGill University, Canada
❖ Paul Leonardi, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
❖ Natalia Levina, New York University, USA
❖ Ann Majchrzak, University of Southern California, USA
❖ Phanish Puranam, INSEAD, Singapore
Venue
The conference will take place on top of a historic hill at the Hotel and Conference Centre Monte Verità (Latin for mountain of truth). This facility is located above Ascona, a border town between Switzerland and Italy, overlooking the beautiful Lake Maggiore.
Contact
For more information about the conference, please go to www.digiera.ethz.ch
All questions about submissions should be emailed to digiera@ethz.ch