Dear colleagues,

We are editing a book titled : "Organizing after crises: (public) management and learning" (to be published to Peter Lang, Public Action series) and are seeking for chapters addressing related issues, as presented here below. We guess suscribers from the list would be inderested. Abstract (500 words) should be sent by November, 31.

Best wishes, and do not hesitate to contact us,

Laurent & Nathalie


CALL FOR CHAPTERS
Organizing after crises: (public) management and learning edited by Prof. Dr. Nathalie Schiffino, Prof. Dr. Laurent Taskin, Julien Raone and Céline Donis 
 
1.How do organizations learn from risk or crises, and how do they implement lessons?
Public and private organizations increasingly face situations characterized by risk. One characteristic of risk is its ability to unravel most of conventional management, based on general and routine principles. Nowadays, organizations have been specifically designed to handle it. This is notably the case of administrative agencies regulating risk with societal impact, such as food safety, nuclear energy or public transport. For such organizations, risk prevention and risk management have required adaptable strategies as well as specific competencies. Today, a specific challenge is addressed by the issue of learning. How do such organizations –including administrative agencies- learn from risk regulation and potentially from crises, as well as from the interconnection between phases of crises and routine?

This is puzzling in a society where performance, reporting and blame become issues at stake. Political science and organization studies are two disciplines that have traditionally addressed this topic. Studies in political science have examined learning as deeply connected to accountability and blame. They pay attention to competing frames about lessons to be drawn and responses to be addressed (Boin et al., 2008; Birkland, 2009). Organization studies and crisis management have focused on the modes of learning and the barriers weighing upon organizational dynamics (Elliott and Smith, 2006; Wang, 2008). These disciplinary perspectives complement each other. Their intersections call for an integrated reading of post-crisis learning that takes into account the social dynamics as well as the organizational and institutional conditions in which they occur (Elliott and Macpherson, 2010). 

Indeed, in a political science tradition, crises are interpreted as windows of opportunity exploited by actors interacting on the issue of learning and change (Keeler, 1993; Kingdon, 1995; Stern, 1997; Birkland, 2006; Wang, 2008; Deverell, 2009b; Veil, 2011). Learning results from a political dynamics involve actors attempting to push forward their interpretation of events, their views on lessons to be drawn and their framing of the change to be conducted. This has encouraged scholars to examine the dynamics shaping the agenda and the decisions taken in phases of post-crisis. Scholars analyzed with great depth strategies, discourses, interests and resources constituting these political dynamics (‘t Hart, 1993; Brändström et al., 2004; ’t Hart et Tindall, 2009; Boin et al., 2009; Müller-Seitz and Macpherson, 2013). 

The institutional context proves to be particularly influential on these dynamics through media and public mobilization, civil society and stakeholders or the nature of arenas where frames compete such as inquiry commissions (Boin et al., 2005; 2009; Brunet and Houbaert, 2007; Parker and Dekker, 2008). Closely related to questions of blame and accountability (Boin and ‘t Hart, 2003; Boin et al., 2005; 2008), learning is expressed as a framing contest: « Crises typically generate a contest between frames and counter-frames concerning the nature and severity of a crisis, its causes, the responsibility for its occurrence or escalation, and implications for the future » (Boin et al., 2009: 82). 

In a second tradition influenced by organization studies and management, the absence of systematic organizational learning following crises was observed. It has led to the proliferation of studies addressing the various factors shaping learning within organizations at structural and cultural levels (Stern, 1997; Elliott et al., 2000; Pidgeon and O’Leary, 2000; Fauchart, 2006; Pham and Swierczek, 2006; Smith and Elliott, 2007; Deverell, 2009a). From a psychological point of view, studies have also pinpointed the existing biases, the normalization processes, the rigidity of belief and other psychological mechanisms underpinning organizational learning linked to crises (Roux-Dufort, 2000; Tucker et al., 2002; Moynihan, 2008; 2009). Although these strands of literature have positioned learning as final stage of the crisis management process (Coombs, 2007; Veil, 2011), research has shown that it also occurs during crises (Moynihan, 2008; Lampel et al., 2009).

Based on this rich knowledge of both disciplines, a special emphasis is put more precisely in the book on providing an integrated framework based on the intertwined contributions of both disciplines. Cross-disciplinary overview on the issue would provide an added-value for research and action in the field. Besides, the book would contribute to integrate macro, meso and micro levels. We are interested in how the regulatory State responds to risk in the broader context of policy making. and discussions are extended to the shift from the government to the governance of risk (Raone and Schiffino 2014, to be published). but we are also interested in explaining how organizations take their place within systems of risk governance and how they “respond to the full range of regulatory and risk management pressures to which they are subject” (Hutter, 2008: 2). In other words, we want to describe and analyse how they organize and what kind of HRM processes and policies are designed in order to learn from crises (Raone, Schiffino, Taskin and Donis, 2012). In such a context, the issue of learning is also relevant at a micro level of analysis.
To put it in a nutshell, several dynamics are at the heart of the book: how organizations face societal risks on a daily routine, how they react in times of risk/crises, what they implement in order to comply with their mission and to answer authorities’ expectations when routine is disrupted, which mechanisms encourage or impede them to learn from risk/crises, how they conceive lessons and potentially transform them into new mechanisms, procedures, norms, etc.

2. Calling for original theoretical proposals and for evidence from empirical research To highlight such dynamics, the book aims at presenting empirical material that allows understanding the complexity, the limits and the promises related to this organizational learning processes. Research methodologies would be based on case studies as well as comparisons. The empirical contributions can highlight results on both private or public organizations. A special interest is put on administrative agencies that “traditionally” deal with the regulation of societal risks. Investigations at different levels of analysis (micro, meso and macro) and of power (from local to international) are welcomed. Texts with a critical consideration of how organizations organize their short and long-term responses to societal risk are especially expected.

In this perspective, the book can partly fill the gap of a cross-investigation questioning the classical institutional level approach. From a theoretical point of view, the book aims at developing original theoretical considerations, departing from both the institutional context and the organizational processes underpinning the way organizations produce their responses to societal risks, and the way they learn from such critical situations. This book proposes real theoretical perspectives on how to consider different levels analysis in the study of risk regulation and organizational learning, how to consider the issues of power and its role in the production of learning processes and routines, how competing logics contribute to define the organizational response to risk issues, how individual (civil servants, managers, etc.) behave in front of competing logics, how this generates hybridity and tensions, how individuals as well as teams try to cool down the pressure generated by organizational procedures of reporting and blame, and so forth.

3. Research questions for the chapters
The book would be structured in three distinctive but complementary parts, illustrating the theoretical and methodological purpose presented earlier. A first part would present some contributions on how organizations learn from crises. A second part would be dedicated to some contributions on the mechanisms of organizational learning in the contexts considered here. A third part would propose multidisciplinary considerations helping to concretize the research agenda at the heart of our book, proposing to understand both the learning processes and the responses to crises. Therefore, to know more about “organizing after crises”, we are willing to call for chapters that address a.o. the following questions:
-What is the impact of “agencyfication“ on risk regulation and learning from crisis? (focus on agencies) -In post-modern States or governance societies, which interactions between political decision-makers, agencies, stakeholders, medias, citizens prevail? (systemic perspective) -What has been the evolution in terms of learning mechanisms, crisis management, risk regulation within (public) organizations? (historical perspective) -How do organizations learn from risk and crises: processes, strategic games, knowledge transfer, policy transfer, etc.? (organizational perspective) -Which lessons for (public) managers can our knowledge on “organizing after crises” draw? (decision-making prospect) For sure, this is not an exhaustive list of research questions. The examples we provide help in giving some insight into the content of the book. Contributors must feel free of proposing any complementary content in link with the purpose of the book.

Besides, editors will develop the common thread of the chapters. As we have explained before, the central theme of the book is how organizations learn from risk and crises, potentially entailing change within organizations and beyond their boundaries. This will serve as a common frame for the chapters. Interconnection between the chapters will be guaranteed through interactions between the editors and the contributors. Notably, a workshop in Belgium will be held (see below). The editors mean to avoid a sole compilation of chapters and to provide a deep coherence as well as a performing integration of the whole content.

4. Practical information for contributors Publisher Peter Lang-International Academic Publishers, Series “Public Action”, ISSN 1783-6077 (http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?cid=5&event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=series&pk=526)

Length of the texts
We envisage each chapter as running to 6000 words, giving an overall manuscript with a length of more or less 96,000 words, including notes and references. Diagrams, figures, tables or illustrations are welcome.

Schedule
31 th November 2013: abstract (500 words max.) to be sent to the editors 15th December: answer to the contributors about the acceptance of their chapter Winter 2014: writing of their chapter by contributors, with editors’ interplay May 2014: workshop in Belgium for a joint discussion of the chapters (free of charge thanks to our funding) – precise appointment through doodle 30th August: final draft of the chapters sent to the editors September 2014: submission of the manuscript to the publisher Winter 2015: publication of the book

5. About the editors
Through a joint research project, the editors have experienced interdisciplinary approach. Combining analyses of political science and organization studies, they propose a specific framework on “organizational regulation of societal risk”, both methodologically and theoretically. More specifically, our team is involved in an ARC (“Actions de recherche concertées”, funding by Belgian French-speaking public authorities) research project from 2010 until 2015. This funding would allow welcoming contributors in Belgium for the workshop. The research project pays attention to public and private organizations facing situations characterized by societal risk. The objective underpinning this research is threefold. First, it aims at questioning internal regulations produced by organizations facing risk. Second, by comparing the way societal risk has been tackled at different times within the same organization, its ambition is to identify how these structures have transferred their knowledge on societal management from one situation to another. Third, it compares how organizations have regulated societal risk, what kind of knowledge has been transferred and whether the process has been effective/efficient. 


Prof. dr. Laurent Taskin
Université catholique de Louvain - Belgium
Louvain School of Management 
Head of Institute for Labour Studies