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PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE Reflections from

EGOS 2012
Reflections from EGOS 2012:
culture, design and sustainability
Jeff Mike 33
Human and Organizational Learning, The George Washington University,
Washington DC, USA Received 4 September 2012
Revised 3 October 2012
13 October 2012
Abstract Accepted 15 October 2012
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to share a personal perspective on the 28th Annual European
Group on Organizational Studies (EGOS) Colloquium held in Helsinki, Finland in July 2012. It explores
the author’s reflection on his participation in the EGOS Colloquium Subtheme 29 titled “Designing
Culturally Sustainable Organizations.”
Design/methodology/approach – The author’s reflection was based on his participation from a
constructionist perspective.
Findings – The author argued that participating in EGOS provided critical feedback and additional
insights on his research regarding the design of culturally sustainable organizations and how this
research may apply in the South Asian context.
Originality/value – This paper offers the personal perspective of an American doctoral student and
human resources development professional with experience in South Asia on his observations as an
attendee of the 28th Annual EGOS Colloquium.
Keywords South Asia, EGOS, Conference reflection, Design, Complexity, Constructionist
Paper type Viewpoint

Introduction
The European Group of Organizational Studies (EGOS) held its 28th Colloquium in
Helsinki, Finland, in July 2012. According to its web site (www.egos.com), EGOS is
“a scholarly association which aims to further the theoretical and/or empirical
advancement of knowledge about organizations, organizing and the contexts in which
organizations operate.” EGOS currently claims over 2,000 members from 46 different
countries, and espouses a diverse, pluralistic approach to organizational studies
and understanding through the social sciences and humanities. The theme of the
28th annual EGOS Colloquium was “Design!?” The inclusion of both the exclamation
point and the question mark in the theme title was an attempt to convey the need for
active engagement in the diverse discussions around design and organizations,
and for a structured questioning of current approaches, assumptions and
conceptualizations of design in organizational settings. The colloquium itself was
divided into 57 sub-themes, each with a specific focus on a particular approach to
and/or application of design. It is important to note that at the EGOS Colloquia
sub-theme participants are expected to remain with their sub-theme during all sub-theme
breakout sessions. Sub-theme participants are also expected to read the contributions of
each participant in their sub-theme prior to the conference. While the conference
program allowed for participation in broader, conference-wide events, the sub-theme South Asian Journal of Global
structure was intended for participants to immerse fully in their sub-theme topics and to Business Research
Vol. 2 No. 1, 2013
pp. 33-42
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
The views stated in the manuscript are solely those of the author and are not representative of 2045-4457
the views of any institutions of which he is affiliated. DOI 10.1108/20454451311303275
SAJGBR engage in repeated conversations with like-minded colleagues for in-depth
2,1 discussion and generation of new ideas, approaches and applications of the specific
sub-theme topic. This approach was different from the one I had experienced at
other conferences where participants were free to attend any session they could make.
The focussed approach of the sub-theme format offered an appealing alternative to
the typical conference.
34
Purpose, subjectivity statement and theoretical framework
I attended the EGOS conference as a participant, which is also not my typical approach
to academic conference attendance. I usually attend conferences as a recruiter in my
professional role. In addition to being a third-year doctoral student in the Human and
Organizational Learning (HOL) Program at George Washington University I am also
a practitioner with 14 years of experience in human resources management and
development. My current role includes management of the recruiting function
and human resources generalist support at a large, social science-focussed professional
services organization with research, evaluation and technical assistance projects across
the USA and throughout the globe. For over ten years and across a number of
employers, I have been responsible for providing human resources support for projects
in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal providing primary education, disaster relief
and economic development services through local partners in each country. I have been
directly responsible for human resources policies, practices and procedures in
these countries, as well as the professional development of the human resources staff
in these offices. I have traveled to Pakistan on two occasions to work directly with the
human resources staff and to ensure adequate and efficient HR support for two large,
geographically dispersed projects there. My work and travels provide stimulating
opportunities to work with, and learn from, people with diverse backgrounds, as well
as to support what I see as work with a positive social impact.
I joined the HOL Program to find ways to formalize this learning and to develop my
own research skills for the advancement of shared knowledge for the benefit of
humanity. As my studies have progressed, it has become clear to me that I have an
opportunity, perhaps a responsibility, to help address and close the gap between
researchers and practitioners in human resources development. Torraco (2005)
identifies this gap as widening due to a number of factors, including researchers
not communicating the applications of their theories in a manner that makes sense to
practitioners and practitioners who do not take the steps to incorporate their practices
into theory for the sharing of knowledge. Exacerbating this gap is the accelerating
rate of change organizations are experiencing and how neither researchers nor
practitioners are learning quickly enough to keep up with the changes. The recognition
of the fact that learning in my field is not keeping up with change, along with my work
in international development projects, has driven my interest in exploring
sustainability.
The theoretical framework within which I attended the conference and wrote this
reflection paper is constructionism, which asserts that “knowledge is not simply
transmitted from teacher to student, but is actively constructed by the mind of the
learner” (Kafai and Resnick, 1996, p. 1). Constructionism involves the creation of both
knowledge and artifacts that are meaningful to the learner. Artifacts in this sense
may include a book, sculpture, computer program or even an organization. The
creation of artifacts in constructionist theory brings design together with the
generation of knowledge. Thus by engaging in design, the learner is actively
constructing knowledge and bringing a tangible entity into the physical world. Reflections from
Learning and design converge into learning through design (Kafai and Resnick, 1996). EGOS 2012
Knowledge and artifacts abound at academic conferences. One of the main purposes of
such conferences is to share knowledge, and each paper, presentation or transcript
available at conferences may be considered an artifact in the constructionist form.
Attending the EGOS Colloquium with the “Design!?” theme provided me with a unique
learning opportunity to simultaneously explore both organizational design and the 35
emergence of thinking around sustainable organizations through the development,
sharing and critique of artifacts, including one I helped create. What has been
particularly intriguing about this process is the fact that in most of my professional
experience associate with economic and social developing in South Asia, notions of
organizational design and sustainability had been imported from, or imposed by,
western donors and their global implementing partners. I find this ironic given the
focus on stakeholder involvement and community development as centerpieces of
project implementation to achieve tangible and lasting outcomes from donor
investment. More importantly, however, I began to consider how the rapid growth or
potential for growth in South Asian economies brings an occasion to redefine
sustainability on both local and regional scales and to explore new organizational
designs that meet the unique needs, opportunities and cultures of South Asia.
I had submitted a paper for the 2012 EGOS Colloquium for Sub-Theme 29, titled
“Designing culturally sustainable organizations,” in collaboration with an HOL faculty
member, Dr Shaista Khilji, and a fellow doctoral student, Smita Kumar. The call for
papers for the sub-theme sought work that could integrate culture, design and
sustainability in organizations exploring the meaning of sustainability, the influence
of multiple contexts and cultures on sustainability and design in organizations, and
whether organizations and the cultures within them can be designed for sustainability.
The sub-theme organizers called for conceptual, case-study and qualitative and
quantitative empirical research that could answer questions related to the intersection
of sustainability, design and culture. Additional questions included leadership of
culturally sustainable organizations, cultural relativism as related to sustainability,
characteristics of sustainable organizations and the values that promote organizational
sustainability. Our paper was titled “Designing sustainable organizations through
self-organization, co-evolution and emergence: Adopting a complex adaptive systems
approach” (Khilji et al., 2012), and had been accepted as one of the umbrella papers in
the sub-theme to encourage broad thinking of our topics during the three days of
sub-theme presentation and discussion.
Our paper is conceptual and examines the question “can values of sustainability
(including its many dimensions and communities) be purposefully embedded within
organizations?” (Khilji et al., 2012, p. 3). One of the early challenges with the work was
in defining sustainability. The academic literature on sustainability is relatively new
and there is no commonly accepted definition for sustainability, however, examination
of a few perspectives provides enough information to frame sustainability within a few
key concepts if not to provide a full definition. Mirchandani and Ikerd (2008) made note
of the observations of management thinkers like Peter Drucker and Edwards Deming
regarding the need for management to focus on the well-being of workers and
environmental impacts as well as financial health. Mohrman and Worley (2010) wrote
of the triple bottom line, including financial, environmental and social impact and
returns, as defining elements of sustainability. The United Nations (1987) released
a report on sustainable development providing one of the most durable and widely
SAJGBR accepted definitions of sustainability in terms of meeting present needs without
2,1 sacrificing the ability to address future needs. Others, including Ramirez (2012) and
Mog (2004) define sustainability in terms of complexity, uncertainty and dynamism
with and among organizations and their environments. Our framework for
organizational sustainability incorporates permanence along with performance and
consideration of social, environmental and economic aspects (Khilji et al., 2012).
36 Our framework for sustainability involving permanence and performance across
a number of aspects brought the concepts of complexity and paradox into our work.
Sustainability of multiple aspects across an ever-changing environment suggested
complexity theory could inform our approach. The choices individuals must make
to support sustainability with relation to permanence and performance raise the need
to review sustainability through the lens of paradox theory. While, as in the case of
sustainability, there is no accepted definition of complexity theory (Anderson, 1999),
complexity thinking in the social sciences incorporates six behavioral aspects to
inform its approach, “including self-organization, non-linear feedback, edge of chaos,
co-evolution, emergence, and path dependence” (Espinosa and Porter, 2011; Anderson,
1999). Our approach to paradox and sustainability was informed by Ramirez (2012)
who addressed the paradoxes inherent in sustainable development, and Smith and
Lewis (2011) who noted that increasing globalization and change in organizational
environments bring contradictions. Our framework for sustainability and the
implications of complexity and paradox led us to choose complex adaptive systems
as models for organizations as described by Marion and Bacon (1999) for their ability
to remain robust while adapting to changes in the environment, and as described
by Espinosa and Porter (2011) as a dynamic, flexible model focussing on processes as
well as performance. We proposed agent-based modeling, a computer simulation
technique for understanding the behavior of complex adaptive systems (Miller and
Page, 2007), for modeling top-down and bottom-up evolution of culture and the impact
of varying values on the culture of an organization striving toward sustainability.
We concluded that traditional, top-down design of organizations has its limitations
in terms of sustainability. While unfortunately my co-authors could not attend the
colloquium in Helsinki, I was excited to bring our theoretical framework and
conceptual conclusion to Sub-Theme 29 to hopefully engage in some rich discussions
and to obtain some useful feedback for the benefit of my colleagues and our work on
designing culturally sustainable organizations.
Our conclusions regarding the limitations of top-down approaches to design and
sustainability have particular significance in South Asia given the current and
potential economic growth in South Asian countries and the factors that contribute
to growth and its potential. According to Ghani and Kharas (2010), the primary engine
for driving economic growth in South Asia is the rapid expansion of the services sector
in the region. Services account for 70 percent of global output and have fueled the rapid
economic expansion of India. More importantly, “developing countries can sustain
services-led growth because there is enormous space for catching up and convergence”
(Ghani and Kharas, 2010, p. 4). The capital involved with developing a services sector
includes financial and human capital, rather than the limited natural resources
and rigid physical plants required to develop a manufacturing base. As a result,
organizations specializing in services may enjoy more flexibility than manufacturing
organizations and can respond to changes in markets and policies more rapidly as
non-linear change and complex phenomenon define the environment in which they
operate. Unfortunately, the human capital comprising services organizations may also
be more fluid, leading to labor shortages and high levels of turnover. This is where the Reflections from
limitations of a top-down approach to designing sustainable organizations may be EGOS 2012
most pronounced. In order to develop sustainable organizations in service economies,
the people whose knowledge and skill provide the direct services must be engaged
in the development of the culture of the organization. Rather than rigid, top-down
rules-driven cultures, sustainable organizations in the highly fluid service sector must
be developed from the bottom-up and incorporate attractors like trust and other values 37
important to the individuals providing services. As the service sector in India and
other South Asian countries continues to expand, researchers, managers, policy
makers and investors need to understand how to develop sustainable human capital
organizations for the protection and growth of the financial capital in the region.
It is my hope that by participating in the exchange of ideas and knowledge at the
EGOS Colloquium that I will begin to develop a better understanding of how to
design sustainable organizations. Ultimately, I hope to collaborate with researchers
from South Asia on studying, understanding and designing sustainable services
organizations for the benefit of South Asian populations.

Participation in Sub-Theme 29
The umbrella papers were scheduled for the first day of the sub-theme, just after the
sub-theme opening and framing discussion conducted by the sub-theme chairs. Our
paper was included with two others with similar themes and scopes. The umbrella
paper sessions were comprised of a brief presentation for the entire group followed by
detailed questions from co-presenters and a general question and answer session with
the whole group. The format of the umbrella sessions required thorough reading of all
papers by each presenter in order to facilitate the discussion with specific questions.
The fact that I would need to ask in-depth questions about the other papers encouraged
additional reflection upon and engagement with our own work, as well as that of the
other presenters. I knew the other presenters would be reading our paper in depth as
well, rather than just skimming them, which I suspect many conference attendees do
given the huge amount of information available at such conferences. I was appreciative
of the work they would put into providing feedback. The umbrella session format also
prepared me well for the rest of the sub-theme activities.
Our paper was well received. Feedback was polite and supportive, although not as
critical as I had expected. The reviewers, and the audience, agreed that the work met
the marks for face validity. As is common with conceptual work, however, the lack of
empirical data can limit the discussion. Our concepts, frameworks and definitions were
all sound according to the reviewers and the audience, yet without additional studies,
they remain abstract and thus limited in their applicability. I was surprised that the
reviewers and audience offered no significant challenges to our constructs, theoretical
approach or conclusion. A few of the audience members asked additional questions
regarding complex adaptive systems and agent-based modeling, however, these
questions were more requests for additional information and references than serious
critiques. The review and discussion of the other work in the umbrella session,
however, provided the richest learning of the day for me.
The other work presented in the umbrella session offered different perspectives and
additional considerations that I and my co-authors had not incorporated into our work.
Tore Hillestad (2012) offered a discussion of competing values and paradox in
developing the capacity to change within an organization. Hillestad’s (2012) description
of an ambidextrous organization and the processes required to handle change, paradox
SAJGBR and values in a dynamic environment sounded strikingly similar to our description of
2,1 complex adaptive systems in the context of sustainability. The similarity was uncanny.
Here were two pieces of work, written by researchers from different countries
and informed by diverse and distinct theoretical frameworks, arguing the same
points about organizations, culture and sustainable design using different words. This
similarity caused me to reflect and realize the limitations to a singular approach
38 to solving a problem, along with the potential for collaborating with diverse others
who are working to solve the same problems. Furthermore, I see the value in
developing a body of work independently of other researchers so that all may convene
and work to share and understand the work from diverse, independent perspectives.
I was beginning to personally appreciate the format and purpose of academic
conferences as I experienced first-hand a diversity of approaches combined with
an apparent unity of purpose.
Zolfaghari’s (2012) contribution to the umbrella session provided another valuable
insight on sustainability, values and design. Zolfaghari (2012) explored the effect of
trust on social sustainability in multi-national organizations. Trust, she argues, is an
essential element of sustainable culture, allowing individual members to tolerate risk,
ambiguity and uncertainty in their corporate environments, especially in cross-cultural
situations. Zolfaghari’s (2012) thorough treatment of trust and its impact on
sustainable culture provided an excellent construct for me and my colleagues to
incorporate into our model of sustainability and organizational design. Trust may be a
fundamental value required for sustainability and a key ingredient in the recipe for
sustainable culture. We can incorporate the value of trust into our agent-based models
of organizations as one of the primary variable attributes of the agents to explore
potential patterns of behavior as these attributes and the environment vary. I was
hoping to add some tangible feedback or heretofore unconsidered elements from the
EGOS 2012 Colloquium into the next phase of our work, and my co-participant’s
treatment of trust provided exactly the type of additional insight and perspective
that I was expecting from the conference.
The rest of Sub-Theme 29 provided rich, in-depth discussion of topics such as:
sense-making and communicating sustainability, contextual issues of organizational
design, a walking tour of Helsinki to experience design first-hand, and rich discussions
of leading culturally sustainable organizations and several case studies on
sustainable organizations. The work presented at the sub-theme included research
and discussion of various organizations, including multi-national corporations and
banks, healthcare organizations, an emerging airline, a university, government
organizations and many others. The discussion was rich, informed and respectfully
critical, though again I was expecting more detailed and challenging feedback.
The final activity of the sub-theme was a round-table discussion of defining
sustainability for organizations, building the case for sustainability and a call for
action around organizational sustainability. Participants agreed that the numerous
and diverse definitions of sustainability provide both challenges and opportunities to
researchers and practitioners, but that general concepts could be successfully
incorporated into discussions of sustainability. The case for sustainability boiled
down to “What does sustainability mean to an organization,” “Why is it important to
an organization” and “How do leaders respond to the case for sustainability?” The call
for action was simple: try to make sustainability relevant at the individual level while
keeping the impact on the collective apparent. The details of each conversation
reflected the diversity of perspectives and the relative newness of concept in social
science research. The sub-theme participants were in agreement that sustainability is Reflections from
an important factor in organizational management and studies, and that additional EGOS 2012
work is imperative for advancing our understanding and application of sustainability
in organizations.

Meet the editor and plenary sessions

Outside of the sub-theme events, I took advantage of a few other offerings at the EGOS 39
Colloquium. I attended a session designed for dialogue with the editors of a number of
scholarly publications focussed on organizational studies on what makes a paper
publishable in their respective journals. The editors described publishable work as:
thoroughly theoretically informed, methodologically well developed, having strong
theoretical implications, relevant to theory and broader debates within the field and
exciting, interesting and questioning of loosely held assumptions in the field. This
conversation was helpful to me as I consider how to take the step from submitting
work to conferences to submitting it to peer-reviewed journals. Of particular interest
is the focus on theory development as a primary aim for publication. This emphasis on
theory building in the academic journals combined with the lack of a cohesive theory
on sustainability experienced in my sub-theme has, since the conference, pushed me to
further explore theory building in the field of human resources development.
I also attended a plenary session on organizational design and approaching it as
an art, a craft or a science. The plenary session provided a history of great designers of
furniture, clothing, buildings and organizations. For me the consistent theme was
evident: designers must consider the users from the beginning if their design is going
to be useful, effective and sustainable. Without considering the users a specific design
may be sensational, even profitable, but it will not be sustainable. One particular
comment I heard during this session was with regards to where the field should look
for new design and related theory. The statement was made that researchers need to
look to the developing world for new ideas and new approaches to design. One
commenter noted that Europe is “dead” and that the USA is no longer the interesting,
single source it had been for new approaches to management. This led me to reflect on
the work I had supported in South Asia, and what new sustainability theories
and organizational designs might arise from the region given current economic
circumstances and a commitment to finding new ways of economic development.
In most of my work in support of relief and development projects in South Asia,
sustainability had been defined as lasting change and financial survival beyond the
support of a bi-lateral or multi-lateral donor. The result has been a failure to reach
sustainable change. The foreign aid system itself can breed dependency at the same
time it is seeking sustainability. Local professionals are frequently rewarded for their
experience with the donor organizations rather than their consistent affiliation with
a partner organization, undermining organizational learning and capacity. Partner
organizations are only just now beginning to be evaluated on their success at achieving
sustainable change, so there could be new incentives for recruitment of long-term staff
into these organizations and reduced turnover, however, the new model is yet untested.
My current perspective comes from my work in foreign aid and international
development, though I suspect some of the same issues might arise from other areas of
economic development as well. Frequent turnover and the challenge of sustainable
financial returns can be a problem in the commercial world, perhaps to a greater
extent, reducing a return on investment in staff. I wonder what the donors and the large
multi-national corporations could learn from researchers and practitioners from the
SAJGBR burgeoning and struggling economies of South Asia as they develop new theories
2,1 and approaches to culture, sustainability and organizational design. It is my hope that
colleagues from this region will join the discussion and add innovative, diverse and
effective approaches to solving the problems of sustainability and development that
ultimately will affect the whole of humanity.
Many of the South Asian projects that I have supported involve providing greater
40 access to education, especially for girls, with the goal of bringing them into the labor
force as productive economic contributors. According to Ghani and Kharas (2010),
“countries with high employment in services tend to have the highest participation of
women in the labor market” (p. 4). Putting women to work increases household income
and reduces poverty. As these girls become increasingly educated and enter the labor
force, their goals, needs and interests will have a significant impact on the values and
cultures of the organizations that employ them. Those organizations that fail to take
this into account risk losing competitive advantage as increasingly skilled women
move to, and stay with, organizations whose cultures and values incorporate their
goals, needs and interests more explicitly. Again, it behooves researchers, managers
and policy makers in South Asia to study and understand the impact of increasing
numbers of women in the workforce will have on their businesses, their economies and
their societies. Perhaps some organizations in South Asia can avoid the painful
mistakes made by their predecessors in the west such as discrimination, the wage gap
and family unfriendly policies and procedures. Perhaps they will incorporate these
lessons learned from the outset as they set about designing sustainable organizations.

Conclusion
The practical and theoretical insights I gained from attending the conference, along
with the valuable relationships with other social science researchers with an interest in
sustainability, culture and design, provided a solid return on the time and expense of
my participation in the conference. While I did not receive the robust, critical feedback
on the work my colleagues and I had performed, other information and realizations
obtained from attendance met or surpassed my expectations. That other researchers
were approaching the same problems with similar, innovative yet distinct approaches
was encouraging, and sharing approaches with them undoubtedly advanced all of our
thinking. The insight regarding trust and its role in a sustainable culture provided a
directly applicable addition to our current work, and I look forward to incorporating
this concept into the next iteration of the work.
While participation in the EGOS Colloquium and Sub-Theme 29 provided new
content to incorporate into the agent-based modeling approach to exploring
sustainability and culture, my experience also caused me to reconsider my interests
for a dissertation and potential methodological approaches. I believe agent-based
modeling has tremendous potential in the social sciences and that eventually it may be
used to support the development of testable hypotheses related to culture and
sustainability. The empirical data and process depictions they generate may provide
intermediate artifacts of organizational research as a safe yet tangible step between
purely conceptual compositions and real organizations as artifacts. I have mentioned
the limitations of purely conceptual work previously in this paper. Moving from
conceptual work to creating new and innovative organizations without intermediate
steps can be risky and expensive. Finding investors, managers and practitioners
willing to experiment with their organizations without an intermediate proof of
concept will be difficult if not impossible. Agent-based models in organizational
research can provide researchers, investors and practitioners with a sense of what to Reflections from
expect as they attempt to design sustainable organizations from the bottom-up. As a EGOS 2012
result, I will continue to pursue agent-based modeling as a tool for creating these
intermediate artifacts and have discussed our work with a fellow researcher with my
employer who has considerable training and experience with agent-based modeling.
Unfortunately, at this time, the method is out of reach for me and my dissertation given
its newness as a tool and lack of validated applications. I am aware that researchers 41
and computer scientists are working diligently to approve agent-based modeling
as a tool for the social sciences, and I anticipate the time when it is accessible to me and
my research interests.
Participation in the Colloquium and Sub-Theme 29 has also given me renewed
impetus to study theory building in human resources development and related social
sciences such as management and organizational behavior. The dearth of applicable
theory in sustainability, and related concepts such as organizational learning provides
a tremendous opportunity for a doctoral student to add to the body of knowledge
in this field. Since the conference I have refocussed my literature reviews on the
prominent thinkers on theory building in human resources development, and how to
address the widening gap between researchers and practitioners. As I build my
knowledge of theory building and develop skills through my dissertation research,
I am looking forward to a career of collaboration with other researchers to research and
develop practical, theoretical solutions to social science problems. This reflection
paper serves as the artifact of my experience with the EGOS Colloquium and the
learning I experienced there, and I hope others will examine it with a critical
perspective and provide me with questions and feedback to advance the thinking on
these topics. Perhaps I will have an opportunity to collaborate with researchers
from South Asia to advance theory building in sustainability, culture and design
in the future as well.

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About the author

Jeff Mike is currently Senior Director of Recruiting and Human Resources Liaisons at the
American Institutes for Research, a non-profit social science research firm focusing on education,
health and workforce issues in the US and internationally. For the past ten years he has held
positions focusing on recruiting, change management and human resources in large, mission-
driven non-profit organizations focusing on humanitarian relief, sustainable international
development and the application of social sciences in education, health and the workforce both
domestically and internationally. Jeff is currently a doctoral student in the Human and
Organizational Learning Program at The George Washington University, USA. His research
interests include sustainability, theory development in non-Western contexts and bridging the
gap between research and practice. Jeff Mike can be contacted at: jmike@gwmail.gwu.edu

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