Ecologies of
Organization and
Entrepreneurship
EUROPEAN SUMMER ACADEMY
BERLIN, 29.5.–3.6.2022
To study and help shape ecologies of organization becomes ever more urgent. Ecosystems are collapsing in front of our eyes and news of environmental breakdown have become a seemingly endless spectacle. Can practices of organization, management and entrepreneurship find meaningful ways to address runaway climate change, or are they locked into business as usual?
Addressing this question requires a rethinking and an understanding of organization as fundamentally ecological. In the wake of ecological thinking, the human and her/his organizational forms is being placed amid a democracy of things, and of things then being enlisted into human affairs. Ecological thinking studies the relational processes of systemic openness, receptivity and affect, and potential through which life worlds are organized, including those of human beings. In this sense, talks of units, individuals, entrepreneurs and formal organizations gives way to talk of gatherings, spheres, assemblages, milieus or interiors; talk of cause and effect gives way to talk of immanence, affect, resonance, touch and association; talk of laws gives way to talk of tendencies and patterns; talk of symbols and classifications gives way to talk of expressions and ruptures; talk of prediction
gives way to talk of attunement and speculation; talk of categories gives way to talk of intensities; talk of power as control gives way to talk of power as a vital, life force and vulnerability.
The Summer Academy is dedicated to understand and exploring organizational and entrepreneurial forms and process along these lines: as fundamentally ecological. This entails using the city of Berlin as empirical site for tracing and inquiring into ecologies of organization in different shapes and guises. Joined by researchers of all participating universities as well as guests, we will jointly work towards an exhibition of the students’ findings on organizational ecologies.
Course Schedule
19:00
Joint Welcome Dinner
9:15–9:30
Check in at Pfefferberg
9:30–11:00
Conceptual groundwork: Ecologies of Organization and Entrepreneurship
11:00–11:30
Break
11:30–12:30
Forming fieldwork groups around themes and sites (approx. 8–10 groups)
12:30–13:30
Lunch
13:30–15:00
Groupwork: reading and discussing each other’s texts, formulate key theses
15:00–15:30
Exemplary poster presentations
15:30–16:00
Break
16:00–18:30
Introduction to field work and Preparing for fieldwork in groups
18:30–19:00
Fieldwork plan, feedback
9:00–18:00
Fieldwork begins. Groups will be visited by lecturers during the day to discuss first findings and the progress of the fieldwork
17:00–19:00
heck-in for feedback discussions (optional)
9:00–16:00
Fieldwork (again, visited by lecturers in the field)
16:00–18:00
Feedback discussion of fieldwork and next steps at Pfefferberg
18:30
Joint dinner
09:00
Arrive at Barenboim-Said Academy
9:00–10:00
Discuss how to work the with material
10:00–14:00
Group work: Analysis of Material
14:00–
Prepare for the exhibition
9:00
Arrive at Barenboim-Said Academy
9:00–10:00
Set up the exhibition
10:00–12:30
Exhibition opening and tour
12:30–13:30
Lunch
13:30–15:00
Wrap-up
Faculty and Speakers
Timon Beyes is Professor of Sociology of Organisation and Culture at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He is a director of Leuphana University’s Centre for Digital Cultures, and holds a fractional professorship at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. He has a background in Sociology and Management Studies and has done his doctoral and post-doctoral research at the Institute of Sociology and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland. His research focuses on the spaces, technologies and aesthetics of organization in the fields of media culture, art, cities as well as higher education.
Monica Calcagno is associate professor of Design and Innovation management at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Department of Management. Co-founder of the laboratory on Management of arts and cultural activities (m.a.c.lab), and coordinator of Master’s degree curriculum in Innovation and marketing. Her research interests refer to the following main topics: innovation from the engineering turn to the rhetoric of creativity, design attitude in management education, user language and narratives in exhibition contexts, archives and the process of organizing, cultural entrepreneurship and social innovation. She teaches courses on Design and innovation management, and Management of cultural organisations. Among her most recent publications, “Interpreting innovation. Design creativity art” published in 2017 and a contribution on “Innovation” in Timon Bayes and Jörg Metelmann (edited by) “The Creativity Complex. A Companion to Contemporary Culture” in 2018.
Robin Holt is a professor at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School. He studies the nature of organization form. His inquiries have taken a number of directions, including the entrepreneurial creation of new organizational forms; the strategic management of organizations, the technological mediation of organization, and the development of processual methods for studying such. He is currently undertaking a study of craft work in Scandinavia and Japan.
Lydia Jørgensen, PhD, is a post doc at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy (MPP), Copenhagen Business School, and at the Institute of Sociology and Cultural Organization, Leuphana University Lüneburg. Lydia’s research interests include atmosphere, space, design and organizational aesthetics, in relation to the aesthetic modulation of the social, the senses and the political. She is interested in and works with experimental qualitative methodologies and performative research approaches.
Maximilian Schellmann, PhD, is currently PostDoc at the Copenhagen Business School, Department for Management, Politics and Philosophy and at Leuphana University Lüneburg’s Centre for Digital Cultures in conjunction with the European Haniel Program on Entrepreneurship and the Humanities. He is also a visiting lecturer at the University St.Gallen. His research interests include Migration Studies, Urban Studies, Organization Theory, Cultural Entrepreneurship and Aesthetics.
Chris Steyaert is Professor for Organizational Psychology at the University of Sankt Gallen. He has published in international journals and books in the area of organizational theory and entrepreneurship. He is teaching courses on creativity in relation to the field of team dynamics, entrepreneurship and urban creativity, and experiments with pedagogical approaches drawing up aesthetic forms such as drama, dance, design, documentary and (digital) display. He edited the Routledge Companion to Reinventing Management Education (2016) with Timon Beyes and Martin Parker.
