Mini Tracks – Calls for Papers

Leadership and Governance of Enterprise 2.0
Managing Intellectual Assets
Happiness and Well-being at Work – its link to Leadership and Productivity
Online Leadership
Conventional, Robotic and e-Academic Leadership

Read the author guidelines

Call for Papers - Mini Track on Leadership and Governance of Enterprise 2.0

Track chair: Professor Charles Despres, SKEMA Business School, France

The new 2.0 technologies greatly facilitate the communication of user-generated content and are aimed at the emergent collaboration of individuals, groups and organizations. Blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and rich media are propagating quickly in companies across a variety of platforms (SharePoint, Lotus Quickr, Knowledge Plaza, Google Sites …). In general, this places tremendous content-generating power in the hands of distributed users. It also diffuses risk, return, decision-making and strategic direction. Issues of leadership and governance therefore loom large in Enterprise 2.0, and classic approaches to business management seem ill equipped to deal with the speed and reach of this technological Tsunami. At the same time, there is evidence of significant human / enterprise benefits in a world that is clearly entering a connected and empowered future.

This mini-track is designed to examine the leadership and governance issues associated with Enterprise 2.0, along two main dimensions:

1.     2.0 technologies applied to the enhancement of market-oriented business processes (R&D, innovation, marketing, strategic alliances …)

2.     2.0 technologies applied to the leadership and governance of the company itself (employee participation, empowerment, IBM Jam, participative strategy …)

Papers are invited that examine a wide range of issues within these two parameters, for example:

• Traditional (command & control) organizational structures and Enterprise 2.0
• Leadership and Enterprise 2.0: requisites and contrasts with existing models
• Organisational Behaviour and Enterprise 2.0: issues associated with teams, networks and virtual interaction
• Governance issues associated with Enterprise 2.0
• Risks associated with user-generated content and knowledge loss
• Making the business case for Enterprise 2.0
• Technologies associated with Enterprise 2.0: infrastructure and process challenges
• Cases illustrating best practice / success / failure in implementing Enterprise 2.0
• Defining organizational boundaries in an Enterprise 2.0 environment
• Macroeconomic perspectives on Enterprise 2.0
• Security of sensitive data and privacy of customers in a 2.0 environment
• Ethics of monitoring, logging, filtering 2.0 user communications to limit data loss
• Legal and compliance issues associated with user-generated 2.0 business value

For mini track submission details, see the call for papers page.

Charles Despres

Call for Papers: Mini Track on Managing Intellectual Assets
Track chair: Dr M. Gordon Hunter, University of Lethbridge, Canada

Information and knowledge provide organisations with a strong foundation for exploring new opportunities and to perpetuate the culture and systems necessary for maintaining a competitive advantage.  This creates the need for regular reflection on the past, current and future practices of intellectual asset management.  The “lessons learned” approach often used in the knowledge management field may be employed to investigate what can be gained from the past, evaluate practices to manage intellectual assets and use the insights to design a better future.  Intellectual Capital Theory may be employed to outline the flows of knowledge within the firm.  These flows may be organised into three categories.  First, relational capital involves the relationship between the firm and external entities such as customers, suppliers, partners, and competitors.  Second, structural capital includes administrative processes and collaborative standards which promote knowledge sharing within the firm.  Third, human capital represents the tacit knowledge of employees and the business processes they follow when carrying out their duties.

The papers in this track will investigate intellectual assets from a theoretical perspective and a practical perspective.  Thus, academic researchers and practitioners are encouraged to submit their work.

Topics can include, but are not limited to:

§  Intellectual assets

§  Knowledge management

§  Intellectual Capital Theory

§  Relational capital

§  Structural capital

§  Human capital

§  Intangible corporate assets

§  Tacit knowledge

For mini track submission details, see the call for papers page.

Gordon Hunter

Call for Papers: Mini Track on Happiness and Well-Being at Work - its Link to Leadership and Productivity “Contemporary Perspectives on Psychopathology in the Workplace”

Track co-chairs: Philip Merry, Global Leadership Academy, Singapore and Dr Florian Sala, SKEMA Business School, France

Workplace happiness is becoming more important as staff search for meaning at work, organisations look for new ways of engaging the workforce, the impact of positive psychology research and national well being policies gain ground. In this climate leaders will increasingly need to understand how to help develop workplace happiness which impacts productivity, attendance, health, motivation, intercultural harmony and goal achievement etc. Because of the increasing popularity of this topic this track is for practitioners and thought leaders who have something new and different to share with participants looking for cutting edge ideas.

Topics can include, but are not limited to:

§  Happiness at work;

§  The changing psychological employee/employer contract;

§  The changing face of employee engagement;

§  Managing energy at work;

§  Leadership’s influence on happiness at work;

§  Happiness across cultures.

For mini track submission details, see the call for papers page.

Philip Merry


Florian Sala

Call for Papers  - Mini Track on Online Leadership
Track chair: Professor John Politis, Ph.D, Neapolis University, Cyprus

The concept of online leadership is new and hence has received minimal attention from organisational behaviour researchers. Leadership research has been directed almost exclusively to face-to-face and verbal situations. The question is how to inspire and lead employees who are physically dispersed and with whom the major communication medium is electronic. By extension, can people be influenced to create new ventures? Or are such people entrepreneurs and virtual leadership has no role to play in creating new ventures?

To increase knowledge in the field of leadership and identify relationships between virtual leadership, entrepreneurship and new ventures, scholarly and practical context papers are invited to this mini track aimed at debating, but not limited to, the following questions:

§  What is online leadership and how does it differ from traditional organizational leadership?

§  How leadership changes when relationships are by network interactions?

§  What is the role of virtual leadership in the process of nurturing an entrepreneurial and creative culture, subculture, new ventures?

§  Does virtual leadership provides on-the-job support, encouragement, and reinforcement to new ventures?

§  Does gender play a role in being a successful virtual leader, particularly around creativity, entrepreneurship and new ventures?

§  Can virtual leadership be supportive of creative decision making that gives customers new or improved goods and services?

§  What are the challenges for online leaders, particularly around developing and maintaining trust?

§  Are online leaders characterised by vision, foresight, providing encouragement, trustworthiness, dynamism, positiveness, and proactiveness?

§  What leadership skills are required in deciphering the emotional components of messages? 

For mini track submission details, see the call for papers page.

John Politis

Call for Papers  - Mini Track on Conventional, Robotic and e-Academic Leadership
Track chair: Professor Chaudhary Imran Sarwar, University of Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan

The purpose of this mini track is to extend the boundaries of knowledge and understanding into academic leadership to encompass the areas of Robotic academic leadership, Online academic leadership or e-Academic Leadership as well as Conventional academic leadership. With the increased popularity and dependence on having a virtual presence and virtual processes, it is important to focus on the potential benefits and limitations of online academic leadership. Robotic operations and processes are also gaining an increased acceptance. This mini track is a step towards the development and refinement of theories, principles, concepts, and practices for online academic leadership and robotic academic leadership.

Emerging concepts in academic leadership include e-education, e-learning, e-teaching, e-examination that may be followed by robotic-education, robotic-learning, robotic-teaching, and robotic-examination. Thus the exploration of robotic academic leadership, e-academic leadership and conventional academic leadership is topical.

Contributions to the mini track are invited on any aspect of conventional, online, and robotic academic leadership but indicative topics include:

• Leadership Assessment,
• Leadership Development,
• Leadership Training,
• Leadership Coaching,
• Leadership Education
• Leadership Practice

We welcome innovative interpretations of the mini track theme and suggested topics. Contributions might take the form of papers, case studies or more imaginative events that address the issues outlined above.

For mini track submission details, see the call for papers page.

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