Call for Applications: PWD on Weaving Craft, Temporality and Creativity in Organization Studies
at the EGOS Colloquium in Athens, 2nd of July, 2025
Facilitators:
Miriam Feuls, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Daniel Hjorth, Lund University, Sweden
Piera Morlacchi, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Birke Otto, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany
Yutaka Yamauchi, Kyoto University, Japan
Purpose
Drawing inspiration from the EGOS Colloquium 2025 theme "Creativity that goes a long way", this PDW brings together scholars in time, craft, and creativity-related research. The workshop invites thoughtful and imaginative reflections on the intersection between these three research fields, to further develop an understanding of time, craft and creativity as dynamic and entangled processes.
While scholars in organization studies have had a long-standing interest in creativity, research on creativity has only recently taken a more processual (Hua et al., 2022; Fortwengel et al., 2017; Schiemer 2024) and temporal turn (Feuls, Lüthy & Svejenova, 2023; Otto et al., 2024; Schiemer, 2024; Svejenova, Feuls & Stjerne, 2025). Simultaneously, research around the process of craft work (Bell & Vachhani, 2020; Gasparin & Neyland, 2022; Holt & Yamauchi, 2023; Yamauchi & Hjorth, 2024) have gained significant momentum in the field of management and organization studies.
The dialogue among the communities on temporality, craft and creativity has made important contributions to organization studies by, for instance, emphasizing a shared focus on materiality. For example, studies of craft and artistic work have expanded our understanding of how novelty is organized through social and bodily connections with 'vital materiality' (Bell & Vachhani, 2020; Lüthy & Steyaert, 2019). Meanwhile, studying collective creativity in the music studio as well as innovation processes in brewing and dairy production, temporality scholars uncovered how materiality 'does' time. These studies expand our understanding of how time is organized through objects and materials, as well as how different pasts and futures become present and help actualize creative potentials (Schiemer, 2024; Hernes, Feddersen & Schulz, 2021).
To continue and intensify the conversation between these three research communities, the EGOS Standing Working Group (SWG) 11 on "Time and Organization Studies: Navigating Change, Emergence & Complexity" invites colleagues to explore how weaving creativity, craft and time can go a long way in organization studies. Moreover, we see this also as an opportunity to connect old and new friends of the SWG already before its official launch in 2026 with sub-theme/SWG 11 on "Time and Organization Studies: Tracing and Crafting the Materiality of Time" at the 42nd EGOS Colloquium 2026.
In this PDW, we ask each participant to 'bring' their research project to the workshop as well as a personal object that represents a creative process, event and/or outcome to which they feel connected. Using both projects and creative objects as imaginative springboard and material tools to 'noticing differently' (see, for example, Simpson & Revsbaek, 2022), we will collectively explore how creativity and craft research can be further advanced with a temporal lens, and how our understanding of time and temporality can be expanded through studying creative processes and crafting.
Some exemplary questions to be reflected through the projects and objects could be:
- How do different temporal structures (e.g., deadlines, cycles, unstructured time) impact creative processes and outcomes?
- How do the temporalities of practices in craft and (collaborative) creativity, often involving slow deliberate processes and intense experiences of time, expand our conceptualization of time?
- How does the integration of digital tools and automation alter the relationship between time, craft, and creativity?
- How does materiality mediate the interplay between time, craft, and creativity, shaping processes, outcomes and narratives?
- How does the organizational challenge of reconciling the deliberate, time-intensive nature of craftsmanship with the fast-paced demands of modern industries open up new research avenue for time scholars?
- How do narratives about time (e.g., 'timeless craftsmanships' vs. 'innovate fast or fail') shape organizational identity and creative approaches?
- What does research on craft and creativity teach us about the 'ethics' and 'politics' of time?
Format
The PDW is structured in three parts:
- Introduction: facilitators will share their personal objects and their reflections about how research in creativity, craft and time can be inspirational for one another.
- Group-sharing and discussion: participants will join a facilitator to discuss their research projects and personal objects. Personal objects can be a small painting, a knitted sweater, a photo portraying cooking, a piece of music recording, or a storytelling of an exhitibion experience. Only the sky is the limit here.
- Plenary exchange and collective learning.
For more information about the PDW and how to apply, check out the EGOS webpage: https://www.egos.org/jart/prj3/egos/main.jart?rel=de&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1727462957064&subtheme_id=1738874718135
or contact the conveners of the PDW:
Christina Lüthy
Lund University, Sweden
christina.luthy@fek.lu.se
Benjamin Schiemer
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
benjamin.schiemer@jku.at
Sunny Mosangzi Xu
Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
smx.ioa@cbs.dk
We are looking forward to your applications and participation!
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Christina Lüthy
Copenhagen Business School
Malmö
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