Practice-based Perspectives in Organizational Psychology:
Foundations, Developments and Future Directions

The conference aims to focus on the current and future developments with regard to practice-based approaches, which are increasingly gaining importance in the fields of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Studies. 

Practice-based theory forms an umbrella term for a wide range of approaches that are associated with the practice turn (see Gherardi, 2012; Nicolini, 2013). At its heart, practice-based research is concerned with questions of how and why people do things in specific manners and how these actions are shaped by their contextual, often politically charged, structures and vice versa. A main reason for the rise in interest in practice approaches has been their ability to overcome the limitations of other post-structural approaches, especially those of discursive frameworks, by taking into account materiality and people’s mutual performances. This allows the process-oriented study of how people coordinate time, spaces and movements within relationships into dynamic patterns of reoccurring action. Empirical research, which employs practice-based perspectives, has thus created novel insights into the reshaping of the many facets of work - including the reshaping of its practices and conditions (Gherardi, 2012).  

While practice approaches are per se understood as a heterogeneous field that draws on multiple theoretical re-sources such as presented by Wittgenstein, Bourdieu, Foucault, Giddens or Schatzki (Nicolini & Monteiro, 2016), the empirical field currently lacks coherence, making it hard to differentiate and relate insights and to place their contribution into the development of the broader theoretical agenda. This coincides with the fact that scholars en-gaged with practice-based research will commonly attach their works to larger streams of debate, for example around the organization of healthcare, streams of diversity management or streams concerned with the disruptive effects of new technologies on traditional management strategy, rather than streams explicitly addressing practice-based issues. Thus, we see it as an important next step, triggered through the heightened application of practice research, to explicitly relate and order current studies along their theoretical and methodological trajectories. The aim of doing so is to create a community of scholars interested in practice-based research in Organizational Psychology and Organization Studies, and thus to develop these fields. 

Therefore, the conference aims to bring together a group of international experts in practice-based theory with a group of HSG-associated scholars who have engaged with a number of recent empirical projects, which all draw in various ways upon practice-based theory. The timing is apt for organizing an in-depth exchange, which helps to validate and support these ongoing research projects but also lays the ground for a bottom up mapping and sense-making of the field, and for discussing similarities and differences in the theoretical and methodological orientations of the projects. 

The contributors of the conference consist of OPSY PhDs, Postdocs and Alumni, as well as other local and inter-national scholars with whom the OPSY has been collaborating in the past or plans to intensify collaborations with in the near future. Even if these contributors form the main conference participants, the conference is open to a broader audience of all those interested in practice-based approaches in organizational contexts at our University. Also, those who are interested in the topic, but who do not find time to participate in the whole conference, are welcome to join the evening keynote, which gives a broader overview of and insight in the current debate. 

The structure of the research conference is organized in a fashion that allows the ordering of existing research projects around what might be understood as related ‘fields of practices’. Concretely, four fields of practice will be explored: caring practices, new work practices (including the use of new technologies), artistic practices as well as diversity practices. For each field of practices, an international expert on the matter is invited to discuss the presented works.

Keynote Speech:

Silvia Gherardi (University of Trento)

Silvia Gherardi is Professor for Sociology of Organizations and the Sociology of Work. She has been an important figure in the practice field, due to her early promotion of practice-based research and her outstanding theoretical and empirical contributions to current understandings of practice theory in the field of Organization Studies.

Silvia Gherardi will give an overall framework to the research exchange on practice-based approaches.

Fields of practices:

Caring practices

International expert: Gazi Islam

Gazi Islam is Professor for People, Organizations and Society at the Grenoble Ecole de Management. One main focus of his work is on issues of care and help care systems.

The following scholars will be invited to make contributions and/or join round table discussions on the theme of care practices: Dr. Wiebke Tennhoff (gender & child care), Dr. des. Katharina Molterer (elderly care), Dr. Simone Gutzan (sense-making in hospitals).

New work practices

International expert: Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo

Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo is an Assistant Professor in Organisational Social Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She has been engaged with the practices of transitions between work, un(der)employment and entrepreneurship that have emerged since the start of the global financial crisis.

The following scholars will be invited to make contributions and/or join round table discussions on the theme of new work practices: Dr. Chrysa Sklaveniti (virtual team dynamics), Dr. Dominik Mösching (globalization).

Artistic practices:

International expert: Timon Beyes

Timon Beyes is Professor of Sociology of Organisation and Culture as well as the Director of the "Centre for Digital Cultures" (CDC) at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. He has worked and published extensively both in the fields of artistic and new work practices.

The following scholars will be invited to make contributions and/or join round table discussions on the theme of artistic practices: Christina Lüthy (art intervention), Dr. Bruno Deckert (Kulturhaus).

Diversity practices: 

On the basis of a recent research project on diversity (see Janssens & Steyaert, 2018) Chris Steyaert will discuss research projects that can be summarized under the umbrella of diversity practices.

The following scholars will be invited to make contributions and/or join round table discussions on the theme of diversity practices: Dr. Verena Witzig (living arrangements), Dr. Ursula Offenberger & Dr. des. Carolina Borra (gender in academia), Dr. Kim Poldner (female entrepreneurship), Dr. Max Schellmann (refugee camps).