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Dear all, I would like to bring to your attention a Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) mini-conference that may be of interest to you or your colleagues, organized by Matt Vidal and myself on “Organization Theory and Workplace Politics under Globalization.” Interested scholars may propose a panel and/or papers for the mini-conference at the 2010 SASE annual meeting. We are particular interested in getting scholars seeking to bridge the organization theory and sociology of work. Mini-conferences at the SASE annual meetings are based around a selected number of focused themes, and have open submissions for panels, based on an extended abstract (approx. 1000 words). Each mini-conference will consist of 2 to 6 panels. Each panel will have a discussant, meaning that selected participants must submit a completed paper by June 1, 2010. If a paper proposal cannot be accommodated within a mini-conference, organizers will forward it to the program committee, who will pass it on to one of the networks as a regular submission. Here is a description of the mini-conference: In a context of global competition, internationalized production, and neoliberal state regulation, workplace politics have undergone profound transformations. The sociology of work (including labor process analysis, studies of occupations and professions, work redesign, and gender) has documented and theorized changing workplace politics under globalization. Meanwhile, organization theory has generated insights regarding routines, capabilities, institutions and organizational environments that can provide a powerful view of organizational change implied by globalization, but has largely failed to account for the operation of power relations within or between organizations under competitive pressures. A more explicit integration of the two broad disciplines – organization theory or sociology of work – offers a promise to better understand and explain the wide variation in work organization, relationships, and practices (e.g. reconciling the seemingly contradictory processes of upskilling or collaborative work in a context of ongoing pressures for cost cutting, externalization, work intensification, short-termism, etc). We invite contributions from scholars developing approaches that combine insights from different theoretical traditions of organization theory (e.g. new institutionalism, social-network analysis, sense-making, practice perspectives) with concerns about power and politics in shaping the worlds of work. Examples could range from qualitative research on particular workplaces to quantitative research on broader trends or forces shaping workplace change; from a focus on independent SMEs to firms (and unions) in global supply chains, to employment practices in multinational corporations. This mini-conference is open to a wide range of empirical foci so long as authors seek to integrate insights from organization theory with a focus on power and politics at work. For more information and to submit a panel or a paper, see the SASE website. Yours, Gregory Schwartz (University of Bath School of Management), [log in to unmask] Matt Vidal (Kings College, University of London), [log in to unmask]