The Organization Development and Change (ODC) Division invites your Professional Development Workshop (PDW) submissions for the 84th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (AOM 2024) held in person 9-13 August 2024 in Chicago, IL, USA. All PDWs will be scheduled Friday-Sunday, 9-11 August. We seek proposals that address grand challenges and create positive change within organizations, between organizations, and in communities.

We particularly encourage submissions that align with the AOM 2024 theme: “Innovating for the Future.” This theme spotlights the unprecedented complexity faced by organizations in the modern world. The future state of the organization is of perennial concern to management scholars and managers alike. The rise of artificial intelligence, inflationary pressures, rapid technological change, and pressing social and climate issues across the globe continue to present challenges for organizations and the people who constitute them. The 2024 theme calls for scholarly contributions that produce insights for addressing these issues and move us towards “reimagining the organization from the inside out.” Submissions should seek to “unlock a wave of innovative insights and evidence-based contributions that pave the way for a brighter future for workers, managers, organizations, and society at large. 

ODC scholars, practitioners, educators, and students are well suited to this moment, as the ODC domain statement demonstrates.  The connective tissue of our inquiry is that of change and changing. We explore the strategies, processes, and outcomes of change at individual, group, organization, community, and institutional levels. Our essential values as a division have always held that innovating is central to building thriving organizations and communities. 

We invite you to consider questions such as the following, adapted and extended from the call of Tammy L. Madsen, AOM 2024 Program Chair: 

• What is the relationship between policy, purpose, and innovation in organizations and how does it affect organizational development and change?
• What approaches to organizational development and change enable (constrain) decision making that integrates all three elements?
• What innovations in organizational policies, processes, and practices can help employees and managers cope with organizational development and change while staying true to their purpose?
• What innovations in organizational forms, systems, and micro-processes can help leaders, managers and workers embed concerns about societal issues in day-to-day activities for enduring impact?
• How might organizations and managers create policies (at macro, meta, and micro levels) that strike a balance between regulating the use of emerging technologies and incentivizing innovation that aligns with responsible, purpose-oriented growth?
• Under what conditions will government intervention help or hinder an organization’s ability to manage change?
• What can leaders do to ensure that governing policies related to the use of emerging technologies and the organizational practices associated with their implementation promote organizational development?
• What actions might leaders take to infuse a responsible business mindset into an organization’s culture, practices, policy-making, and innovation activities?

Submissions to the ODC division may address these—or other topics not necessarily relating to the annual theme—at macro, meso, or micro levels of analysis.

PDWs may take the form of workshops, town hall meetings, debates, cafes, breakout sessions, round tables, research incubators – or new forms you may envision. We are open to a range of different topics and formats that will interest the ODC community.

Successful proposals will be interactive, create an engaging environment, provoke new ideas and learning, and integrate cutting-edge scholarship with applied ideas, processes, and practices. Proposals should be inclusive of participants from a variety of perspectives and backgrounds.

To submit to the ODC Division, please review the submission instructions and refer to the section on information for Professional Development Workshops. The submission deadline is Tuesday, 9  January 2024 at 17:00 ET (UTC-5/GMT-5), but earlier submissions are strongly encouraged. Before writing your submission, we also encourage you to review the ODC Division domain and mission statements. Please contact the PDW Chair, James Vardaman, with any questions about PDW submissions.

Finally, we encourage all those submitting PDW proposals to sign up as reviewers for ODC! We warmly thank all those who contribute to our community and the quality and vibrancy of our program by acting as reviewers for the ODC Division.

We look forward to seeing you in Chicago!