[Air-L] Cfp: pre-Egos workshop on Digital Methods for Studying Organizations and Work

[Alessandro Gandini]

Apologies for cross posting



Dear all, we are writing to remind you of the CfP for the upcoming pre-Egos workshop on



Digital Methods for Studying Organizations and Work



July 2nd 2024, 9am-4pm

Location: Graduate School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, via Pace 10


The purpose of the workshop is to introduce, review, and discuss the principles and potential of researching organizations and work using digital data and digital methods. The notion of digital methods refers here to examining phenomena online either by conducting “digitally native” research that "thinks along" with devices and services (Rogers, 2013) or by engaging in methods of computational social sciences (Lindgren, 2020; Nelimarkka 2023; Lazer et al., 2009), often in combination with more traditional methods in a mixed setting (e.g., Laaksonen et al., 2017; Tikka et al., 2023). Digital methods projects can be conducted either by using ready-made tools available (e.g., DMI Tools, Voyant, Tableau) or coding with Python or R.


Such methods have been extensively used in fields of social sciences such as communication and politics, which typically work with social media data. Uses within organization and management studies are rare (cf. Hannigan et al., 2019; Aranda, 2021; Blaschke et al., 2012; Mohr, 2015). Yet, also studies of organization and organizing are increasingly working with large datasets that often require some digital or computational approaches to explore, filter, or analyze them.


The workshop aims to develop the participants’ digital research thinking and mixed-method reasoning to create meaningful and feasible research strategies for digital research in organization studies. We will introduce a variety of tools and provide pathways to extend skills in engaging with them, including for participants with existing experience in computing. Furthermore, using participants’ data and collective analysis approaches we will engage in a collective, critical discussion about the methods and their feasibility and limitations in different contexts, exploring potential tensions both with regards to workplaces and modes of working as well as concerning ethical approaches to digital data collection and management. Finally, we hope to bring together scholars working in these fields with an interest in studying the digital and fostering future research collaboration to advance this combination.


Submissions:

This workshop invites submissions of 150-300 words that describe their (existing or potential) digital data and initial research problem. Data or idea submissions will be discussed in a round table format with small presentations only. In your submission, please describe your data or potential data and discuss what problems or questions you have encountered in your work. Please also include a brief description of your intended theoretical framework. For the actual workshop, we ask participants to provide a small excerpt of their data (a few pages) that other people can use to familiarize themselves with the data.


Please submit your proposal by April 10 using the form:

https://forms.gle/op3n4Uvixk5xVYno8


Notifications will be sent out by April 24th.


Convenors:

Salla-Maaria Laaksonen, University of Helsinki

Jukka Huhtamaki, Tampere University

Alessandro Gandini, University of Milan

Sophie Del Fa, UCLouvain

François Lambotte, UCLouvain

Damien Renard, UCLouvain

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Alessandro Gandini
Associate Professor of Cultural Sociology
University of Milan, Department of Social and Political Sciences
Via Conservatorio 7, 20122 Milan, Italy
PI of the CRAFTWORK project – ERC Starting Grants 2020