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Dear colleagues,

I would like to draw your attention to the upcoming Special Research Forum of the Academy of Management Journal on "Relational Pluralism of Individuals, Teams and Organizations".

The guest editors are Ranjay Gulati, Martin Kilduff, Stan Li, Andrew Shipilov and Wenpin Tsai.

Submissions are due between September 1 and October 31, 2011.

Below is a shortened call for papers:

An ancient paradox that has modern relevance is that individuals have multiple selves from which unique identities are formed. From the time of the ancient Greeks up to the present, debate has raged concerning whether to place the emphasis on the plurality of selves or the unitary nature of identity. The contribution of psychologist William James (1890: 294) was particularly influential in asserting that a person had as many social selves as they were other individuals who recognized the person and carried an image of the person in their mind. The sociologist Georg Simmel (1955: 150) added further insight with his description of how individuals became unique to the extent that they affiliated with many different non-overlapping groups. It is from these influential psychological and sociological sources that we derive the idea for this Special Research Forum.

We define relational pluralism as the extent to which a focal entity (whether a person, a team, or an organization) derives its meaning and possibility of action from relations with other entities.

Studies are already beginning to examine the phenomenon of relational pluralism and its implications. At the individual level, work has focused on how individuals develop multiple identities (Pratt & Rafaeli, 1997), but this work did not directly examine how these identities shift depending on the configuration of heterogeneous relations in organizational settings (Mehra, Kilduff, & Brass, 1998). At the dyadic level, we know that the extent to which people confirm to each other's identities affects cooperation and performance at work (Milton & Westphal, 2005). But these rich processes of identity confirmation have yet to be explored with respect to conflicting identities deriving from heterogeneous relations.

At the team level, theories and empirical research have examined linkages between social structures and team-level outcomes (Hansen, 1999; Oh, Chung, & Labianca, 2004; Roberson & Colquitt, 2005), but have not explored the origins and consequences of multiple types of inter-team relations.

At the firm level there are conflicting arguments about the consequences of relational pluralism, ranging from the recognition that multiplexity in relationships (Baker and Faulkner, 2002) and competitive positions lead to lower competition (Gimeno & Woo, 1996) to warnings that heterogeneous relations can damage stock market value (Zuckerman, 1999).

Consequently, there is more work to be done to analyze the origins and outcomes of relational pluralism. We are interested in work at different levels and work that derives from psychological, sociological, economic and other traditions. Relevant theoretical perspectives that explore relational pluralism could include social identity theory, distinctiveness theory, leader-member exchange theory, institutional theory, resource dependence theory, relational demography, the resource based view of the firm, and social network theory. Relevant methods could range from qualitative (participant observation, interviews, case studies) to quantitative (analysis of text, survey or archival data). We particularly welcome combinations of methods (e.g., the use of diary data together with social network analysis) in order to capture relevant phenomena such as the emergence of multiplex relations.

Here is a sampling of possible topics:
• the dynamics of relational pluralism, including questions concerning how heterogeneity in social structure is shaped by cognition, and how individuals and organizations develop multiple identities in their struggle for power and control;
• the emergence of hybrid organizational forms from heterogeneous interdependencies;
• the origins of relational pluralism, including studies of the evolution from relational singularity to relational plurality;
• the social contexts from which relational pluralism derives, including studies of how these contexts promote or restrict the formation, maintenance, and recombination of relationships;
• the consequences of relational pluralism, including how heterogeneity and its management affect individual, organizational, and systemic outcomes;
• relational pluralism across levels (individual, team, organizational unit), including questions of how relational pluralism at one level affects the emergence of status and power at another;
• implications of relational pluralism for managerial practice and public policy.

More information on this Special Research Forum as well as the expanded call for papers can be obtained at:

http://apps.aomonline.org/Calls/cfp/paper_info.asp?user_lname=&user_id=&cfp_id=736

Kind regards

Andrew V. Shipilov
Akzo Nobel Fellow of Strategic Management

Assistant Professor of Strategy
INSEAD

http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/faculty/profiles/ashipilov/

http://ssrn.com/author=728108

Colleagues,

I am pleased to share with you the Call for Papers for a Special Research Forum of the Academy of Management Journal. The details are pasted below my signature and are also available here. I do hope you consider submitting your best work.

Sincerely,

Tima Bansal

**************************************************

Dr. Tima Bansal, Ivey Business School

Canada Research Chair in Business Sustainability

http://www.ivey.uwo.ca/faculty/directory/tima-bansal/

CALL FOR PAPERS:

SPECIAL RESEARCH FORUM

NEW WAYS OF SEEING:

Using Novel Theory and Meaningful Cross-disciplinary

Collaborations to Advance Management Research

Jason D. Shaw (Incoming Editor)

Pratima (Tima) Bansal and Marc Gruber (Incoming Deputy Editors)

This Special Research Forum (SRF) encourages "new ways of seeing." This theme challenges our community of researchers, and beyond, to consider fresh, novel, and different theoretical positions, assumptions, and frameworks for their topics of interest. In addition, new ways of seeing provides an impetus to engage in meaningful, ground-breaking partnerships with researchers in other disciplines-using, building, or extending conceptual frameworks, research designs, and analytic techniques rooted in disciplines outside of the management domain to advance our understanding of management issues.

We frequently attempt to tackle new problems or study new phenomena, but the theories and frameworks we use are often grounded in thinking from decades ago; the designs we adopt are those bounded by our areas of interest; and the analytic approaches are the latest incremental improvements on our past gold standards. By applying the same theories, logics, and assumptions, we risk "looking for our keys under the lamp post."

This SRF invites manuscripts that focus on new ways of seeing organizational issues. This SRF focuses on theory-the development, extension, or adoption of new frameworks, perspectives, and lenses applied to management and organizational issues. We encourage authors to consider new, alternative frameworks for addressing management topics rather than reformulating commonly used approaches. In line with AMJ's mission, the call is broad and open to all topics, levels of analysis, and research designs. Submitters should articulate how their manuscript offers a contribution consistent with "new ways of seeing." We hope that this call for new and alternative theory will also spur endeavors that incorporate outcomes beyond those commonly observed in our literature (e.g., short-term, performance-related outcomes). Some examples of broad, interrelated areas below that may be good candidates for new ways of seeing are identified below.

• Sustainable development. Sustainable development "meets the needs of present generations without compromising the needs for future generations." (WCED, 1987). The notion implies new ways of conceptualizing the purpose and outcomes of organizations, but current approaches to research in this area often apply existing theories and methods to sustainability-related topics (e.g., climate change, biodiversity, poverty). Advancing our knowledge of these issues requires theorizing beyond common performance-related outcomes, to other issues that will ensure the livelihood of future generations, including carbon cycles, supply chains, energy use, and consumption patterns.

• Pay disparities and other forms of inequality. Current approaches to the study of these issues are mired in decades-old debates about tradeoffs between effort or motivation and fairness. The extant literature cannot yet disentangle the limits, forms, and conditions under which these differences play out in organizations, forms and facets of disparities and inequalities that hold the most influence on outcomes, and the points at which inequalities become inequitable. Existing studies tend to focus on rather narrow forms of disparities and an even more limited set of outcomes, typically performance. New ways of seeing disparities may include developing or bringing to bear theories of power, status, public policy, culture, and governance.

• Individual and organizational well-being. Current approaches seem linked inextricably to long-standing theories of stress, health, and vitality, focused on global perceptions of wellness, or rooted in an organizational interventionist approach. New ways of seeing well-being could include the development or adoption of perspectives outside of management, occupational psychology, and the like, and might include theory and insights from biology, life sciences, engineering, or other unique perspectives.

These categories are simply example areas where new ways of seeing are needed. Many other possibilities and topics would also be good fits for this SRF. The boundaries of the SRF are not dictated by the theoretical or empirical approach, but by adopting or developing unique theoretical lenses that will result in major leaps forward in our understanding. Although we encourage novelty in theorizing and methods, we will uphold Academy of Management Journal standards of logical and empirical rigor.

TIMELINE AND SUBMISSION

Submissions must be submitted between December 1 and December 31, 2017. Contributors should follow the directions for manuscript submission described in "Information for Contributors" in the front of each issue of AMJ and on AMJ's Contributor Information Page. For queries about submission, contact AMJ's Managing Editor, Michael Malgrande, at mmalgrande@aom.org.