Call for papers for an ephemera conference: Algorithms of organization
Copenhagen, Denmark
12 - 13 June 2025
Conference organizers:
Nick Butler, Emilie Hesselbo and Johan Jönsson
https://ephemerajournal.org/events/algo ... ganization
Algorithms increasingly shape our lives. They influence how we shop on Amazon, what we watch on Netflix, and who we date on Tinder. Algorithms supply us with music that appeals to our tastes;ads that target our desires; and news that confirms our opinions. In short, algorithms can predict what we like and who we are – and, in so doing, transform our subjectivity (Fisher, 2022). Yet algorithms don’t just affect our private lives. They are also coming to permeate our working lives. Companies are now using automated, data-driven processes to make managerial decisions in all sorts of ways: to hire and fire, to monitor and control, to engage and motivate (Jarrahi, et al., 2021). This tells us that algorithms – whether in the form of simple decision trees or deep neural networks – are becoming inseparable from the very task of organizing.
For this ephemera conference, we invite scholars to reflect on algorithmic organizing in the age of digital capitalism – an era in which computer-mediated processes are reshaping what it means to be a worker, a consumer, and a citizen. On one level, algorithmic organizing is nothing new. Frederick Taylor, the father of scientific management, sought to reduce laborers’ knowledge to a series of step-by-step instructions directed towards a predetermined goal – a feat of algorithmic organizing that leaves its mark on low-wage, low-skilled work today (Altenried, 2022). On another level, algorithmic organizing has entered the fabric of our working lives in ever-intensifying ways, at every stage of the employment process, and in every type of occupation, from knowledge workers and senior executives to independent contractors and online influencers. So far, academic research has uncovered the hidden biases of algorithms, such as the reproduction of gender- and race-based discrimination (Benjamin, 2019; D’Ignazio and Klein, 2023);the political implications of algorithms, such as the manipulation of voter preferences (Zuboff, 2022); and the ethical complexities of algorithms, such as the establishment of new norms of behavior (Amoore, 2020). This call for conference papers aims to extend these insights by exploring critical perspectives on work-related algorithms.
An algorithm is not just a computational procedure that generates a series of binary decisions. It is also a ‘culture machine’ – a mechanism that produces fantasies, desires, and embodied experiences (Finn, 2018). In other words, the hardware and software we engage with in workplace settings generate radically new ways of thinking and acting. For example, AI-powered chatbots create an illusion of humanity in organizational settings, even though large language models are little more than statistically-complex ‘bullshit’ generators (Hicks, et al., 2024). Mobile-based productivity apps promise to optimize our working practices, when in reality they facilitate the auto-exploitation of labor (Han, 2017). And wearable technologies enhance the health and well-being of employees while also permitting management to penetrate deep inside the human body (Aloisi and De Stefano, 2022). The problem with algorithms is that they present themselves as neutral, objective, and science-based when in fact, to use Cathy O’Neil’s (2016: 21) memorable phrase, they are ‘opinions embedded in mathematics’. Exposing the wires within the culture machine is therefore a critical task for the ephemera conference.
The shift towards algorithmic organizing is by no means inevitable. Indeed, there is a growing sense of disquiet about digital capitalism and its influence over our private and professional lives. One such phenomenon is ‘algorithmic aversion’, which indicates a preference for human over algorithmic decision-making (Dietvorst, Simmons, & Massey, 2015). Commentators typically see algorithmic aversion as a problem to be overcome or a psychological bias to be fixed – after all, algorithmic predictions tend to be more accurate than human guesswork. But perhaps we should actively cultivate an ethos of algorithmic aversion as a mode of being that insists on the primacy of human (rather than machine) intelligence. This might involve hijacking computer-mediated processes for subversive purposes, such platform workers who ‘cheat’ the software – and teach others how to do the same – for both individual and collective gain (Cini, 2022). As Bonini and Treré (2024: 138) note, repurposing algorithms in this way may allow us “to envision alternative social imaginaries and foster different kinds of data futures”.
We welcome submissions that seek to explore the sociology of algorithms and the philosophy of digitalization from two broad perspectives: the ‘culture in the code’ and the ‘code in the culture’ (Airoldi, 2022). The first perspective looks at how social relations, values, and ideologies come to infiltrate algorithmic processes – such as assumptions about personality types that are built into an AI-driven recruitment platform, or beliefs about leadership that are embedded in a digital engagement tool. The second perspective looks at how algorithms act as social agents and interact with workers in organizational settings – such as the digital interfaces that stimulate our imagination, or the predictive analytics that shape our destiny. Taken together, the culture in the code and the code in the culture will allow us to unpack the black box of algorithmic organizing, and perhaps also point to ways in which we might challenge the ‘smart power’ (Han, 2022) of digital capitalism.
We therefore invite submissions that may include, but are not limited to, the following themes:
- Algorithmic cultures and counter-cultures
- Ideologies of dataism and artificial intelligence
- Smart power and ‘cloud ethics’
- Algorithmic control and resistance in skilled and unskilled labour
- Emotions and algorithms
- Algorithmic imaginaries in the age of machine learning
- Algorithmic decision-making and predictive analytics
- Labour intensification and AI optimization
- Algorithmic management and algorithmic leadership
- Bias and fairness in algorithms
- Algorithmic justice
- Distance and proximity in algorithmic processes
- Critical algorithm studies
Deadline and further information
The deadline for submitting abstracts is 31 March 2025. Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted in a Word document to one of the conference organizers: Nick Butler (nick.butler@sbs.su.se),Emilie Hesselbo (emilie.hesselbo@fek.lu.se), Johan Jönsson (johan.jonsson@fek.lu.se).
The conference is free for all participants to attend, but registration via email is required. Selected papers from the conference will be published in a special issue of ephemera.
The conference will be held at Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark.
References
Aloisi, A. and V. De Stefano (2022). Your boss is an algorithm: Artificial intelligence, platform work and labour. London: Bloomsbury.
Altenried, M. (2022) The digital factory: The human labor of automation. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Amoore, L. (2020). Cloud ethics: Algorithms and the attributes of ourselves and others. Duke University Press.
Airoldi, M. (2022) Machine habitus: Toward a sociology of algorithms. John Wiley & Sons.
Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge: Polity.
Bonini, T. and E. Treré (2024) Algorithms of resistance: The everyday fight against platform power. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Cini, L. (2023) ‘Resisting algorithmic control: Understanding the rise and variety of platform worker mobilisations’, New Technology, Work and Employment, 38(1), 125-144.
Dietvorst, B.J., J.P. Simmons and C. Massey (2015) ‘Algorithm aversion: people erroneously avoid algorithms after seeing them err’, Journal of experimental psychology: General, 144(1): 114.
D’ignazio, C. and L.F. Klein (2023) Data feminism. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Finn, E. (2018) What algorithms want: Imagination in the age of computing. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Fisher, E (2022) Algorithms and subjectivity: The subversion of critical knowledge. London: Routledge.
Han, B.C. (2017) In the swarm: Digital prospects. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT press.
Han, B.C. (2022) Infocracy: Digitization and the crisis of democracy. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Hicks, M. T., Humphries, J., & Slater, J. (2024). ChatGPT is bullshit. Ethics and Information Technology, 26(2), 38.
Jarrahi, M.H., G. Newlands, M.K. Lee, C.T. Wolf, E. Kinder and W. Sutherland (2021) ‘Algorithmic management in a work context’, Big Data & Society, 8(2).
O’Neil, C. (2016) Weapons of math destruction: How big data increases inequality and threatens democracy. New York: Crown.
Zuboff, S. (2022) ‘Surveillance capitalism or democracy? The death match of institutional orders and the politics of knowledge in our information civilization’, Organization Theory, 3(3).
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Prof. Nick Butler
Professor of Business Administration
Stockholm Business School
Stockholm University
SE-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden