Conference Agenda

“Extreme uncertainty – defined in terms of novelty, magnitude, duration, and the rapid pace of change – generates a difficult operating environment for managers and organizations. The radically changed circumstances call for new forms of leadership, new ways of working, and new operating models.” (Finn et al. 2020, 8) This statement taken from a McKinsey publication exemplifies the enormous relevance of uncertainty to todays’ organizations. As the biggest multi-national management consulting company and one of the most prestigious in the industry, McKinsey claims to condense organizations’ needs based on their work experience with numerous clients. At the same time, their publications shape trends in the business world on a discursive level. Therefore, this “call for new forms of leadership” and “new ways of working” (ibid.) can be interpreted as both a discursive trend and an expression of a need examined in organizational practice. However, the two cannot be considered separately.

The discourse of New Work is one of many referring to the challenges organizations are facing in times of uncertainty. As the example above shows, New Work discourse is a popular-scientific one. Rooted in Frithjof Bergmann’s aspiration in the 1980s to transform radically the ways in which we organize work as society, this politico-economic discourse has always been normatively charged. The term has become increasingly prevalent, especially recently, and it has been interpreted in many ways, with no set definition. Its usage shows a wide range from idealistic attempts resembling the original concept to more business-oriented management-strategies (Taimer & Weckmüller 2020). As the McKinsey example points out, the discourse is manifesting, creating, and reproducing notions and normative expectations. From an organizational education perspective, organizations can be seen as spaces, in which institutions, discourses, and norms are enacted (Engel 2020). Simultaneously, organizations as social structures are actors that manifest and perform these institutions, discourses, and norms in specific ways, by translating the existing it into new variations (Engel & Göhlich 2022). Our contribution aims to examine the relation of institutions and organizations by exploring the institutionalization of New Work in organizations. Our research is characterized by tracing documents closely. Based on Smith’s (2002) approach of institutional ethnography, we are investigating how (selected) organizations refer to New Work discourse, how they translate it into organizational programs, and how they perform it. We wish to examine which phenomena manifest when applying each/which theoretical framework. For this purpose, we will introduce three different theoretical perspectives, making use of discourse and document analysis: A historico-philosophical approach (Adorno 1953), an institution theory perspective (Smith 2002), and a genealogical angle (Foucault 2000, 2006). The advantages of this triangulation will be described in the following.

Connected retail refers to organizations that utilize digital technologies and information systems to connect their physical stores, online platforms, stakeholders, and customers into a digital service ecosystem. This ecosystem aims to create value and service in virtual and physical realms (Bowen, 2016). Although the average person may not notice any changes in the technology interfaces used in physical stores, the digital service ecosystems constantly evolve and alter the activities and roles of human employees and customers in the service chain (Larivière et al., 2017). In a connected retail organization, the conditions that shape the service encounter in physical stores constantly change. Employees must keep updating their skills through organizational learning to stay valuable in such an organization. This means that the conditions comprising the organization's sales and service training, including organizational knowledge, routines, methods, norms, values, and roles, must also change along with the workplace.

This working paper aims to understand how the conditions and content forming organizational sales and service training support or constrain salespeople's new roles and skills development as the service encounter in connected stores transforms. To achieve this, the author draws on recent developments in practice theories, particularly the theory of practice architectures (Mahon et al., 2017), which focuses on how practices are prefigured and shaped through arrangements within specific sites. Addressing the research memorandum of organizational education (Göhlich et al., 2018), the theory of practice architectures (TPA) offers a theoretical and analytical framework that provides resources to explore and describe interaction in the semantic, physical, and social dimensions of an organization and social encounters such as the service encounter.

In the 1970s, the retail industry began its digital transformation by introducing computerized cash registers and point-of-sale (POS) systems. These innovations helped automate the transaction process during service encounters. In parallel, service work and the service encounter emerged as research fields, highlighting the social and emotional aspects of work in service organizations )Ikeler, 2016; Payne, 2009). Over the years, scholars from different disciplines and theoretical perspectives have explored service work, service encounters, and workplace learning within the service sector. However, there has been limited knowledge sharing between these research fields despite the extensive literature available. Additionally, there has been a lack of research on the role of frontline employees in service encounters or workplace learning in retail since around 2000.

There are multiple definitions and understandings of the concept of a "service encounter" in service literature. Surprenant and Solomon's seminal work (1987, p. 87) defines a service encounter as "the dyadic interaction between a customer and a service provider." Initially, the service encounter was seen as a game of people driven by learned behaviors relevant to the situation (i.e., roles) formulated in the organization's service script, a detailed guide for frontline employees to follow during a service encounter. However, since marketing shifted its theoretical focus to a customer perspective on customer value creation around 2000, marketing theory and service research have increasingly expanded the definition of service encounters beyond just a dyadic interaction between a firm and a customer to service encounters as ecosystems (Bowen, 2016).

The automation of transactions could be one explanation for why customer service has been a focus in organizational education since the 1990s. However, the soft skills associated with customer service, also known as emotional labor skills, are not easily captured or measured through traditional means of assessing knowledge and skills. This has led to traditional service jobs, such as sales assistant, clerk, cashier and customer service, becoming entry-level positions in retail organizations that do not require any specific skills and are characterized by short-term employment and low salaries.

Schools as socially desired organizations have always been focal points of social, political and economic developments and uncertainties due to the associated mission they have to fulfill. Social change and the omnipresent crises have a direct and indirect impact on organizations, including schools. Crises and uncertainties have the potential to erase or blur existing school structures. In extreme cases, the lack of structures for dealing with these impacts can even threaten the existence of both the organizations and the actors involved, which Weick (1993) illustrated very clearly using the example of a forest fire and the firefighters working there (Weick 1993). In this respect, schools are faced with the question of how they react in moments of crisis and how they manage to handle unexpected situations.

Etymologically, the term crisis can be traced back to the Greek “krisis”, which initially marks a turning point or climax, the end of which is open. The negative connotation that accompanies the use of the term only came into use in today's language (Thießen 2011, p. 63). If one understands a crisis as a turning point or climax, the momentum shifts back to the side of the actively acting actors, who no longer see themselves at the mercy of the situation through passive, reactive behavior, but rather actively shape it, or in the words of Weick and Sutcliffe (2003 ) 'manage' it. A challenge that exists in many European countries - also due to the uncertain times - is the lack of qualified teachers willing to 'manage' the impacts of crisis and therefor the uncertainty in schools. This finding also applies to teachers. Programs for career changers who have previously carried out other professional activities are evidence of this problem. The problem is doubled here: Schools need committed and motivated teachers in order to defy the current uncertainties and are also faced with the situation that there is a shortage of teachers and they have to recruit the most motivated teachers.In this respect, schools as organizations are also required to provide short- and long-term answers to these challenges by asking themselves how they can make themselves attractive as employers for potential teachers. Schools are competing, not only for future students but also for teachers (Altrichter and Feyerer 2017). The perspective of employer branding offers a possible answer to this challange. This term originally comes from strategic corporate management (Sghendo & Said 2022) and is understood as a corporate strategic measure with which companies position themselves as credible and attractive employers (Jepp 2014; Schuhmacher & Gschwill 2014; Biswas 2013). Employer branding can therefore be seen as a concept against the background of which an organization develops as a brand for potential employees and thus stands out from competing organizations. The focus is on so-called attractiveness factors that are relevant when choosing a school as a future employer.

The proposed paper is intended to be a theoretical-conceptual contribution. This article critically discusses the potential of the employer branding approach for the development of an employer brand for schools. The central question here is what contribution schools can make to build an employer brand and what makes an attractive workplace from the perspective of teachers. To this end, the proposed article first outlines the problem. The concept of employer branding is then developed and critically discuesse. The considerations provide an insight into various exemplary attractiveness factors from the perspective of teachers and school management, which we were able to generate as part of an initial exploratory study. The article ends with a summary conclusion.