ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE

6th International Conference
Trento (Italy)

9- 11 June 2005

THE PASSION FOR KNOWLEDGE

First announcement

For the last two decades an increasing number of scholars and practitioners have joined in the debate around the many faceted relationship between learning, knowing, development and the organizing process. What had started as a small conversation has burgeoned into a colossal pandemonium of voices interests business, communities, debates and events. In spite of all expectation, this wave of interest is far from fading away. Just when its exhaustion seems imminent it regains force and intensity. What is fuelling this relentless interest?
We argue that what fuels the debate on knowing and learning has the same origin as what drives people and their organizations to seek out knowledge: love and desire of knowledge for its own sake. While the prevailing functional and economic explanations of the interest for knowledge and learning point to its instrumental value, we contend that knowing and learning are fuelled by passion: they stir passions and they make people passionate. Hence, knowledge as an end in itself motivates people and trigger organizational processes. This applies both to organizational members and to those, like academics and practitioner, who take organizations and the organizing processes as the object of their knowing. By focusing on the relation between passion, learning and knowledge/knowing, we aim to expand the current debate and to explore a less intentional, less instrumental, more reflexive aspect of learning and knowing in organizations.

The 6th International Conference on Organizational Learning and Knowledge, the latest in a series which has been held at Lancaster, George Washington University, and the Ivey School, University of Western Ontario, aims to explore the different aspects of the relationship between learning, knowing and the organizing process from the perspective of the passion for knowledge.

About the conference

This is intended as a working conference, which will be restricted to those presenting papers (and limited to about 100 participants). There will be two types of paper: full papers which are substantial, theoretical and/or empirical contributions of publishable quality (8,000 words max), and working papers which may be more speculative or reporting work-in-progress (4,000 words max). There will be a range of activities including plenaries, formal presentations, and small group discussions to advise on the development of papers.

Submission of Abstracts

Authors can submit a 800 words, or 2 pp. single spaced abstract to the conference address (OLK6@soc.unitn.it) by 30 November 2004. Please indicate whether a full, or working, paper and specify to which of the above themes you intend to contribute.
Notification of acceptance will be communicated by 15 January 2005. Final papers must be submitted by 15 May 2005 in order to be included in the Conference Proceedings.

The conference will be held at the Sociology Faculty of the University of Trento, V. Verdi, 26 Trento Italy, fax +39 0461 881348

For all information please write to: OLK6@soc.unitn.it