Dear Colleagues,
We kindly invite you to join us at the 2026 AOM Annual Conference in Philadelphia for a workshop on goals in and around organizations. We have an excellent panel of leading scholars to share high-level insights and perspectives on the theoretical developments on goals in and around organizations and a research showcase from emerging junior faculty who study goals employing frontier research methods and data.
We'd like to highlight the opportunity for participants to discuss their research ideas related to the PDW theme with our panelists and presenters and receive feedback in the roundtable discussions. To register, simply complete this survey (https://forms.gle/U9p919a1oMLJCXWNA) with a 300-word description of your idea! More details about the session and application process are below.
Thank you and best regards,
Amy Zhao-Ding & Subrina Xirong Shen
Philadelphia AOM PDW: Goals In and Around Organizations: New Theoretical Directions and Novel Empirical Approaches
Submission ID 13813 | Sponsor(s): STR (Primary)
Schedule: Friday, Jul 31 2026 9:00AM - 11:30AM ET at Philadelphia Convention Center in 108B
Panelists: Pino Audia (Tuck School of Business); Songcui Hu (The University of Arizona); Daniel Levinthal (The Wharton School)
Presenters: Valerie Caubergh (ETH Zürich); Subrina Xirong Shen (HKUST); Amy Zhao-Ding (UC Irvine)
PDW Overview
Goals are the foundational compass of strategic actions. From the seminal work of the Carnegie School of Organizational Studies, goals have been central to understanding how organizations formulate strategy, allocate resources, and achieve performance. Yet, today's organizational landscape-characterized by heightened volatility, algorithmic management, distributed hybrid work, and intense stakeholder scrutiny-presents profound new challenges and questions for this core concept. The very nature of what constitutes a goal, how it is set, pursued, and adapted is being transformed.
This PDW seeks to reinvigorate the study of goals in and around organizations by bridging the field's foundational wisdom with these contemporary complexities. We convene a distinguished panel of leading scholars and emerging researchers to discuss a set of interconnected guiding topics designed to deconstruct and reconstruct our understanding of organizational goals, such as the ontology and topologies for goals in and around organizations, the genesis and evolution of goals, sense-making and strategies around goals, as well as the relationship between organizational structures and goal systems in organizations. Our collective aim is to explore the realities and future of goals in and around organizations, ensuring this critical construct remains robust, relevant, and capable of explaining organizational behavior in a rapidly evolving world.
Registration Process
To qualify participation in the roundtable discussion, please complete this survey (https://forms.gle/U9p919a1oMLJCXWNA) with a brief description of your idea (no more than 300 words). The deadline for application is June 30, 2026.
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Amy Zhao-Ding
Assistant Professor
University of California Irvine
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