Call for papers
Organizing for peace
Organizing for Peace: Theory, Practice, and Transformation
Research in the Sociology of Organizations Volume (2028)
OVERVIEW
In an era of escalating geopolitical tensions and violence (Institute for Economics and Peace, 2024), understanding the organizing mechanisms and processes that advance peace across diverse conditions and levels of action is both timely and urgent. Yet, organization and management scholarship has only begun to address these challenges systematically.
This volume aims to advance theoretical understanding of organizing for peace while remaining grounded in empirical realities. We seek papers that apply established organizational theories to peace contexts, develop new theoretical frameworks, or offer rich empirical insights that inform theory development.
RATIONALE AND FIELD-BUILDING OPPORTUNITY
Interest in organizing for peace is surging across the scholarly community. Building on a scholarly evolution of the idea of peace, and why peace can displace war as a viable institution (Rapoport, 1992), recent calls, including Organization Studies' Agora section on "Organizing in/for Peace and War Times" (Meyer & Quattrone, 2023) and the Journal of Management Studies special issue on "Management in Times of Geopolitical Tensions and Turmoil" (Armanios et al., 2025), signal that our field is ready to engage seriously with these challenges. Similarly, growing attention at major conferences (AOM, EGOS, IABS, IACM) and in recent publications (Lumineau & Keller, 2025; Joseph et al., 2024) demonstrates both scholarly momentum and practical urgency.
However, the field remains fragmented. Research on business and peace has provided valuable insights into private-sector engagement (Ganson et al., 2022; Joseph et al., 2024), while separate literatures examine civil society organizing, international interventions, and state-led peace processes. What is missing is a sustained theoretical dialogue that integrates these streams and positions organizing for peace as a coherent area of inquiry within organization and management studies.
This RSO volume offers a unique field-building opportunity. An RSO volume can bring together diverse theoretical perspectives and empirical contexts in dialogue. The developmental review process fosters collaboration among contributors, helping to establish shared conceptual foundations while respecting theoretical pluralism. The resulting volume will serve as a reference point for scholars entering this area and a platform for advancing cumulative knowledge.
Organization and management scholarship offers unique conceptual tools for understanding peace dynamics: theories of institutional complexity, paradox, system change, social dilemmas, collective action, negotiation, leadership, and strategy provide lenses through which to examine how diverse actors organize amid profound uncertainty, opposing constituencies, and life-threatening stakes. Yet these frameworks remain underutilized in peace research. By bringing organizational scholarship into sustained dialogue with peace research, this volume aims to advance both theoretical development and practical understanding of this urgent grand challenge.
STRUCTURE OF THE VOLUME
We aim to structure the volume in three main parts (a) conceptual papers that advance diverse theoretical perspectives on organizing for peace. In addition to full-length papers, we also welcome short essays or reflective pieces from both scholars and practitioners that engage critically or creatively with key questions in organizing for peace; (b) empirical studies that develop theoretical insights on the topic; and (c) methodological contributions that address the specific challenges of researching peace organizing and propose approaches for advancing rigorous inquiry in this area. The final structure will depend on the accepted papers.
Conceptual Contributions
We invite papers that bring diverse theoretical perspectives to bear on organizing for peace; develop new theoretical frameworks for understanding organizing for peace; extend existing organizational theories by applying them to peace contexts; or synthesize insights across theoretical traditions. Possible theoretical lenses include (but are not limited to):
Institutional Theory: How do competing institutional logics (commercial vs. welfare, political vs. economic, pragmatic vs. ideological) shape organizing for peace? How do organizations navigate institutional complexity when peacebuilding goals conflict with other mandates? (Jakob Sadeh & Zilber, 2019)
Paradox Theory: How do actors manage inherent tensions in peace work—between short-term security and long-term transformation, between inclusion and efficiency, between insider legitimacy and outsider credibility?
Systems Theory: How can we understand peacebuilding as a system-level phenomenon involving interdependent actors and feedback loops? How do interventions at one level affect dynamics at others?
Social Dilemmas and Negotiation: How does a logic of appropriateness inform cooperation and collective action in systems fraught with competition and conflict (Kopelman, 2020)? What multi-disciplinary and empirically-grounded negotiation research facilitates paradigmatically shifting from conflict management to conflict resolution among individuals, groups, organizations, and nations?
Leadership: What leadership capabilities enable actors to mobilize action across divides, build legitimacy among skeptical constituencies, and sustain commitment through setbacks? How does leadership differ across conflict stages?
Strategy and Nonmarket Strategy: How do civil society, business, and state actors develop and adapt strategies to advance peace? How do they navigate between market and nonmarket arenas? (Ganson et al., 2022)
Organizational Learning and Knowledge: How do actors learn from experience in conflict settings? How is knowledge about peacebuilding created, transferred, and applied across contexts?
Emotion and Organizing: What role do emotions play in building relationships across adversarial divides? What are the emotional dynamics involved in organizing for peace, at the individual, dyad, group, organizational, and field levels?
Critical Management Studies: How do power asymmetries shape participation in peace organizing, and in what ways do practices aimed at advancing peace reproduce or challenge existing inequalities?
Entrepreneurship: How do entrepreneurs in conflict zones operate and innovate? How do hybrid organizational forms combine commercial and peacebuilding objectives? (Kolk & Lenfant, 2016)
Grand Challenges and System Change: How can research on tackling complex societal challenges (Ferraro et al. 2015; George et al., 2016) inform the particular context of organizing for peace? How can a system-change approach direct action and interaction, as well as empirical investigations of organizing for peace?
Empirical Contributions
We seek papers that offer rich qualitative or quantitative evidence about organizing for peace. Papers may employ innovative methodologies appropriate for conflict settings, and may provide process-oriented accounts of how organizing unfolds over time. Empirical papers may draw on any of the theoretical lenses noted above (or others), and are invited to engage with, but are not limited to:
Actor types: Civil society organizations (NGOs, social movements, religious groups), businesses, state actors, international organizations, or cross-sector collaborations – with preference for studies that advance understanding of organizing across or at the intersections of these actor types.
Conflict stages: Prevention, ending acute violence, conflict management, resolution, or post-agreement transformation.
Geographic contexts: We particularly encourage submissions examining conflicts beyond Western settings and representing diverse regional contexts.
Methodological Contributions
We also welcome methodological papers that reflect on the challenges of studying organizing for peace and propose approaches to advance rigorous inquiry in this area. Research on peace organizing often requires longitudinal designs that trace organizing processes over time, multi-level strategies that connect micro-interactions with system-level change, and methods that are feasible and ethical in conflict-affected settings. Therefore, we particularly encourage submissions that explore:
Processual and Multi-Level Inquiry: How can peace be studied as an ongoing process of organizing unfolding across individual, organizational, and systemic levels over time?
Complexity-Sensitive Inquiry: How can diverse methodological traditions and data sources be combined to account for the complex and nonlinear dynamics of peacebuilding, giving voice to local ways of knowing and acting?
Ethical Inquiry in Fragile Contexts: How can research be designed and conducted ethically and safely in fragile, conflict-affected, or post-conflict environments, while remaining sensitive to power, risk, and harm?
Relational and Affective Methodologies: How can we capture and interpret the relational, emotional, and moral dimensions of peacebuilding — including trust, reconciliation, and repair — through contextually grounded and participatory methods?
SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
Submit an extended abstract (800-1,000 words):
Author information: Names, affiliations, emails, brief bio on a cover page (not included in the 800-1,000 words)
Keywords: 3 or more keywords (also on the cover page)
Research question or focal phenomenon
Theoretical framework and contribution to organizational scholarship on organizing for peace
Empirical approach (if applicable): context, data, methods
Key arguments or expected findings
Contribution to organizing for peace scholarship and to broader organizational theory
REVIEW PROCESS
Following RSO's developmental philosophy, this volume emphasizes scholarly community building. Accepted papers will receive two rounds of developmental review, each including feedback from both a member of the editorial team and a fellow author in the volume. Thus, authors who will be invited to submit a chapter will also commit to participating in the peer review process. We may organize a workshop for authors to present drafts and engage in collective dialogue.
TIMELINE
December 30, 2025: Proposal submission deadline (extended draft)
January 30, 2026: Notification of results
July 1, 2026: First draft due
October 1, 2026: Editorial feedback to authors
December 15, 2026: Revised papers (second round) due
March 1, 2027: Second editorial feedback to authors
May 1, 2027: Final papers due and transferred to production
2028: Volume publication
ABOUT RSO
Research in the Sociology of Organizations (RSO) is a highly regarded series published by Emerald (CABS 3-ranked). RSO enables scholarship and community building. Each paper is available electronically, making it accessible and distributable.
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
Submit your proposal by December 30, 2025 via our Google Form: https://forms.gle/HGyDrVnDwcqnc2wM7
The form will ask you to upload your proposal as a Word document and provide basic information about your submission.
EDITORIAL TEAM
Ambreen Ben-Shmuel, Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan
Linda Jakob Sadeh, Ruppin Academic Center
John Katsos, American University of Sharjah
Shirli Kopelman, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan
François Maon, School of Management, IÉSEG
Joanne Murphy, Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham
QUESTIONS?
Contact: Ambreen Ben-Shmuel, ambreen@umich.edu
We look forward to working with you to advance scholarship on organizing for peace and to building a vibrant community of scholars in this important area.