March 1, 2025: Call for paper opens
June 20, 2025 -> July 4, 2025 (extended): Submission deadline
July 20, 2025: Notification of acceptance by e-mail
September 20-21, 2025: Session dates
We are pleased to announce a Call for Short Papers for international research session meetings held at the 63rd AAOS Annual Meeting, where the mode of language is in English. The general theme is Reconstructing Possibilities in the Age of VUCA: Organizing Time, Space, and Mode. While we welcome papers on a variety of topics related to organization studies widely defined, in particular, we call management scholars and PhD students based in Japan or those who are interested in management studies related to Japan.
The session format also aims at creating a network of academic dialogue and exchange among researchers who conduct empirical studies related to Japan or inspiring theoretical advancement of organization studies, organization theory, organization behavior, business and corporate strategy, innovation management, corporate governance and social responsibility, human resource management, international business and cross-cultural management, entrepreneurship, and small business.
To be specific, the following sub-fields or topics can be listed as examples, but we are open to creative studies not limited to these areas:
Organization Theory
Organizational Behavior
Business Strategy
Innovation
Corporate Governance and Social Responsibility
Human Resource Management
International Business and Cross-cultural Management
Entrepreneurship
Small Business
The short paper must be written in English and must be at least four and no more than ten pages in length including;
(a) the first page with title, author information (name, affiliation, and contact details), and abstract, and
(b) references at the end up to 3 pages with APA format.
Please send your manuscript in Microsoft Word or PDF format via the below Google Form or email (ic@aaos.or.jp).
To submit your paper: Submission Form (Closed)
Important Date
March 1, 2025: Submission open
June 20, 2025 -> July 4, 2025 (extended): Submission deadline
(Due to many requests for extension, we decided to accept submissions by July 4)
July 20, 2025: Notification of acceptance by e-mail
The session, four to six hours per day, will consist of short paper presentations (15-20 minutes) and Q&A (5-10 minutes). The accepted short papers can be published in AAOS's proceedings journal, AAOS Transactions (optional).
Date: September 20-21, 2025
Place: Aoyama Gakuin University (Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan)
Organizers: The International Committee, AAOS in collaboration with members from Department of Management, Aoyama Gakuin University and Aoyama Business School
The conference has parallel sessions. Some of the sessions and keynote speeches will be given in Japanese. Although the conference is only open to AAOS members, AAOS membership is not required for accepted paper authors. AAOS members must pay the registration fee of 5,000 JPY for the AAOS Annual Meeting (including Japanese sessions and this English sessions, excluding the networking dinner fee). Non-members will pay the non-member registration fee, which will not exceed 30,000 JPY (including the networking dinner fee). You need a credit card for the payment. If you do not have any credit cards, please consult us in advance (ic@aaos.or.jp). Please note that AAOS does not cover any travel expenses or support accommodation arrangements.
Some of the international participants must check their necessity to apply for short-term stay visas. AAOS will issue an invitation letter for visa application but does not support the whole visa application process.
We look forward to receiving your submissions and seeing you at the conference.
The theme proposed by members of Aoyama Gakuin University is to rethink how management can navigate and thrive amidst the enormous challenges in the age of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). It clearly requires the need to rethink corporate strategy, formal and informal organization structures, and interactions and communication among the stakeholders, including employees, managers, board of directors, investors, and consumers at large. It is about integrating both traditional paradigms and emerging practices to respond to or act proactively in the transforming organizational context in the accelerating shift for digitization and sustainability, not to mention the emergence of the generative AI, IoTs, and circular economies. Scholars and managers need to change conceptions, definitions, and perceptions of norms and SOPs of organization and management.
The traditional wisdom of theories and conceptual breakthroughs are established over a century of academic endeavors and devoted efforts by practitioners in the analog mode. But these may no longer be applicable to the new turbulent environment. In fact, we see evolution and breaks in management practices as part of old and new paradigms, from Weber's bureaucracy, the Hawthorne experiments and informal organizations, Williamson's market and hierarchy thesis, networks and embeddedness or weak ties, agile organizations in high-velocity, platforms and ecosystems, and sustainability, among others.
To give example, or possible topics and questions, first, time, temporality, and sequence linked to technological advancement is a critical starting point or a food for thoughts. The new or maybe transitive environment at present requires configurations of organizations and management styles across and over different dimensions: Time management for speedier decision-making and achievements, decisive moments of temporal communication and information sharing, and sequential coevolution of organizations and technologies. Organization scholars need to understand the impact and make efforts seriously to respond to the change, and to re-create definition of markets combining complexities and ambiguities, which may involve e-commerce, streaming information processing, remote work styles, and customer interface. Strategically, swift decision-making is needed, moving from the Positioning approach and Resource-Based View to a more dynamic, speedier, capability-based perspective. How can researchers reconstruct organization theories and concepts from the foundations of stable and static markets in the analog days, taking advantage of the ongoing advancement of engineering and information technology and deep learning, and algorithmic calculations that can analyze human behavior or consumer sentiments. Leadership styles and the evaluation method of employee performance in the new age should be substantially different from the past.
Second, space and analog/digital mode are other dimensions linked to the time and moments. Face-to-face (F2F) interactions at office merge into digital spaces with virtual hallucination or a digital twin, whereas switching communications across the different modes of F2F and virtual interactions is a new standard. The advent of AI will further enhance efficiency and complexity. In other words, the boundaries of organizations has become ambiguous to form a variety of configurations including assemblages of actors and agents, formal and informal groups, and hierarchies and command line in the digital spaces. Moving into the future, we need to consider organizational spaces as physical and/or virtual, where new competition and co-creation can emerge, i.e., factory floors, F2F office environments, virtual dialogues and meetings, ecosystems of network and cluster, and geographic extensions such as R&D labs, VR and AR, and corporate outposts. Furthermore, how organizations can optimize supply chains and CRM, processing POS customer data in streaming to offer temporal solutions.
A good understanding of management practices may be achieved through detailed study of the time sequence and the extended spaces of project teams and informal groups that can emerge only temporarily. The advent of digital technologies thus open new fields to study modes as combination and recombination of actors and agents: Digital twins, graphic avatars, remote work, online training, virtual communication and team building, motivation management, and negotiation techniques are among the possible topics as extrapolated for the future AI integration.
In short, how the stock of organizational knowledge, concepts, and theories from the past can be reconstructed in the digital age becomes a significant challenge for organization scholars and researchers. The field can reconstitute the intellectual legacy amassed well over a century of inspirations and findings as to expand into the age of VUCA, including cognition, culture and management, decision-making, leadership, work styles, human behavior and knowledge management, among others. Thus, we encourage submissions of short papers with bold statements, inspiring minds, controversial topical issues, findings in emerging areas, and provocative ideas, as well as the traditional studies of management and organization. Engage in open discussions for a brighter present, or a problematic future we may encounter otherwise!
Prof. Tsutomu (Tom) Nakano,
Conference Chair
Prof. Masaru Yamashita,
Conference Vice-Chair
Jin-ichiro Yamada (Professor, Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University) / Entrepreneurship
Hiroshi Shimizu (Professor, Faculty of Commerce, Waseda University) / Innovation, and Business History
Yutaka Yamauchi (Professor, Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University) / Organization Theory
Chie Iguchi (Professor, Faculty of Business and Commerce, Keio University) / International Business
Jungwook Shim (Professor, Faculty of Commerce, Kansai University) / Family Business
Junichi Yamanoi (Associate Professor, Faculty of Commerce, Waseda University) / Strategic Management
Daisuke Kanama (Professor, Faculty of Transdisciplinary Sciences, Kanazawa University) / Innovation
Masashi Goto (Associate Professor, Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, Kobe University) / Management Organization
Tohru Yoshioka-Kobayashi (Associate Professor, Institute of Innovation Research, Hitotsubashi University) / Innovation