Sarah Richard, Audencia Business School

Lucie Noury, Audencia Business School

Pauline de Becdelièvre, Université Paris Saclay

Céline Louche, Waikato Management School—University of Waikato

Stéphan Pezé, Université Toulouse Capitole

The production and dissemination of knowledge, particularly on inequalities, climate change, and biodiversity, are increasingly under attack. These attacks are reflected in some political and administrative decisions adopted across several national contexts, such as the measures taken by President Donald Trump since his return to power. Beyond the US, academic freedom is being directly or indirectly undermined in many countries. For example, in France, controversies surrounding 'Islamo-leftism' within universities, reignited by the Minister of Higher Education, have been accompanied by concrete attacks on several scientific institutions.

Although research on grand challenges, sustainability, and ecosystem transitions is still ongoing, climate policies and the low-carbon transition are also under attack from many sides. These attacks range from climate scepticism to misinformation and lobbying, and aim to delay or weaken existing or future standards, as illustrated by the recent deregulation movement in Europe around the Omnibus law. Despite research pointing to the depletion of global resources, sustainable finance, ESG investing, and CSR are becoming increasingly polarized. Some asset managers are taking a more cautious approach to their commitments, and major players such as BlackRock announced in 2024 that they would be withdrawing ESG-labelled financial products. Some companies are reviewing their CSR practices and communication by adopting withdrawal or 'silence' strategies.

At the same time, the movement for equity, equality, and inclusion seems to be reaching a peak when it comes to considering diverse identities within organizations. And yet, it is simultaneously accompanied by growing opposition. The murder of George Floyd and the ensuing protests in 2020 intensified diversity initiatives, while fuelling a conservative backlash. In connection with these events, the public statements of certain companies, far from achieving consensus, have sometimes crystallized negative reactions.

Finally, the flexibilisation of work is also undergoing changes. While teleworking, part-time work and flexible hours have become the norm, particularly because of the health crisis, the ideal of constant availability remains dominant. Barriers to the use of these arrangements, such as stigmatization and career penalties, persist and are even becoming more pronounced, while calls for a return to the office are growing.

Whether it be attacks on science, the retreat from climate and financial commitments, the contestation of inclusion policies or the questioning of individualized management systems, these developments reflect a critical re-evaluation of social and ecological advances perceived as progressive: a phenomenon known as 'backlash'.

At its most basic level, backlash is defined as resistance to social progress. It is an active 'counterattack' against initiatives, programmes, knowledge, and policies that aim to change existing patterns of inequality and injustice. Used at a political level, the term refers to a retrograde goal of returning to a previous social condition, using extraordinary objectives and tactics that challenge dominant narratives to interfere with the dominant public discourse. The concept of 'backlash' emerged in the 1970s in the United States, in political science, to describe and analyse right-wing extremism. The emphasis is then placed on the link between 'backlash' and symbolic investment in the past: beyond simple opposition, backlash is often associated with fear of loss and nostalgia for an idealized past. In the 1990s, the feminist movement took up this notion, suggesting that every advance made by women triggers a hostile reaction to block or reverse their gains. Since then, it has been particularly mobilized in the field of gender studies and research on diversity, equality, and inclusion, which combine backlash with the study of the negative social and economic consequences affecting individuals who go against social norms.

Today, some researchers attribute a systematic nature to backlash. All projects aiming for social justice encounter resistance from privileged groups seeking to restore or maintain their power, contributing to a growing polarization of opinions. This development has been fuelled by several structural and psychological factors that have broadened its scope, including fear of losing resources, fear of the emergence of new dominant values, and questioning of existing values.

In management literature, the issue has mainly been explored from the perspective of diversity. Studies have focused on how women, particularly those in leadership positions, who challenge gender stereotypes may face a number of sanctions, such as hostile messages, negative evaluations, lack of promotion, or tensions with colleagues.

However, in a context where organizations play an increasingly political role, where they constitute a microcosm reflecting societal aspirations, and are part of increasingly connected networks of stakeholders, the phenomenon of backlash impacts organizations as a whole. Management and organization studies, together with other disciplines such as political science, sociology and psychology, can contribute to exploring the phenomenon at the institutional, organizational, managerial, and individual levels to shed new light on these dynamics, help us analyse them critically and position ourselves, as researchers and practitioners, in these debates.

At the institutional level, backlash can be understood through the three pillars—regulatory, normative, and cultural-cognitive—that structure the legitimacy of practices. It is not simply a matter of decline, but rather the outcome of institutional efforts aimed at undermining or redefining norms that were previously thought to be established. For example, the recent decline in commitment to sustainable development in the United States is based on anti-ESG laws passed in 37 states and decisions by the Supreme Court. At the same time, a 'backlash industry' is mobilizing framing marketing strategies to influence norms and representations. Nevertheless, institutional work does not only serve to destabilize institutions; it can also aim to defend, maintain, or strengthen them through various institutional maintenance practices involving stakeholders both inside and outside organizations.

At the organizational level, backlash can be overt, as illustrated by the explicit withdrawal of social or environmental policies under pressure following governance or political evolutions. These changes can generate opposition from stakeholders and can prove difficult to implement depending on how deeply rooted they are in regulations, culture, or processes. Alongside these apparent shifts, more subtle forms of backlash are also emerging: resource reductions, the withdrawal of objectives, silence, and changes in vocabulary, generating tensions between discourse and practice. Among stakeholders, trade unions play a central role in protecting existing rights. They constitute a counter-power that can either slow down backlash or contribute to it.

Managers appear to be key intermediaries, caught up in contexts of ambiguity, conflicting values and contradictory demands. Neither mere executors nor fully autonomous, they are faced with moral and political dilemmas, which sometimes lead them to support strategic changes, and sometimes to resist or attempt to preserve certain commitments. However, backlash remains poorly conceptualized as a specific managerial challenge with both organizational and societal dimensions.

At the individual level, organizational contexts characterized by normative uncertainty or contested values can exacerbate the identity and moral tensions experienced by individuals, with lasting effects on their commitment, well-being and career choices. These tensions drive action, with employees who are particularly sensitive to social or environmental issues making their voices heard within organizations in the form of internal activism. But threat is as much a cause as a consequence of backlash: it can emerge from perceived threats to the identity, status, or legitimacy of certain dominant groups, revealing ambivalent dynamics.

Taken together, these different levels do not function in isolation but feed into each other: institutional transformations redefine the organizational and managerial scope for action, which influences individual experiences, which in turn can help to consolidate, influence, or challenge existing institutional frameworks.

This special issue aims to contribute to the theorization of the backlash phenomenon by analysing its institutional, organizational, managerial, and individual manifestations. The objective is to gain a better understanding of the internal and external mechanisms that promote backlash, as well as its effects and their complex relationships. Ultimately, this special issue will seek to understand the representations and experiences of the various stakeholders faced with backlash, including the multiple forms of resistance it can generate.

This special issue calls for papers based on a variety of methodological and conceptual approaches and encourages the adoption of multidisciplinary approaches at the intersection of management science, sociology, political science, psychology, communication, philosophy and law, among others. Submitted articles may be conceptual or empirical and based on a variety of ontologies. They may explore in depth one of the manifestations of backlash (e.g. questioning of science, environmental commitments, DEI policies, or flexible work), take a more comprehensive approach to the phenomenon of backlash, or conduct comparative studies. Submitted manuscripts may also offer an analysis focused on a specific level of analysis (individual, managerial, organizational, or institutional) or undertake a multi-level analysis.

Potential topics

• What are the different forms of backlash affecting organizations? Are there 'invisible' forms of backlash?
• How and to what extent does backlash contribute to the deinstitutionalization of established norms (e.g. ESG, DEI, climate)?
• What forms of institutional work produce or hinder backlash?
• What roles do different modes of governance and different forms of organization play in weakening or, conversely, protecting social progress? Are democratic organizations, in particular, more or less prone to backlash?
• How do organizations respond, resist, protect themselves, and participate in backlash?
• What are the risks, uncertainties, and tensions generated by backlash? How can they be managed?
• What forms of collective response are organized to face backlash (e.g. meta-organizations, networks, lobbying)?
• How do individuals participate in or resist backlash (e.g. through employee activism)?
• What is the impact of backlash on individuals (identity, career paths, values, social representations, experience)?
• How does backlash transform or disrupt individuals' relationships with work and the company?
• What forms of individual and collective resistance to backlash can be observed? What are the conditions and effects of this resistance?
• What is the role of researchers and what stance should they adopt in response to this phenomenon?
• What methodological and epistemological approaches are best suited to studying backlash, its mechanisms, and its consequences? What methodological innovations are needed to better understand its contemporary forms?
• How can organizational theory contribute to understanding the phenomenon of backlash?
• What are the multi-level interactions between societal, organizational, and individual backlash?
• How can backlash contribute to the emergence of other backlashes?

Timeline

• October 19, 2026: Deadline for paper proposals to workshop (maximum 3,000 words, including references)
• November 19, 2026: Online paper development workshop organized by the guest editorial team across different time zones
• February 1, 2027: Opening of submission period for full papers
• June 1, 2027: Deadline for full paper submission
• December 1, 2028: Publication date

Timeline

• April 1, 2026: Submission deadline

Timeline

• September 30, 2026: Full paper submission deadline

Kieran Conboy, University of Galway

Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa, The University of Texas at Austin

Brian T. Pentland, Michigan State University

Efpraxia D. Zamani, Durham University

Technology has fundamentally transformed the way we experience time and temporality, having permeated all aspects of our lives. It influences the way we work, how we live, and aspects of our identity, by shifting the way we communicate with others, accelerating information flows and enabling constant connectivity. As technologies evolve and digital infrastructures increasingly shape organisational and societal life, questions of temporality—speed, duration, sequencing, rhythm, and timing—become central to how we design, adopt, use, and study Information Systems (IS).

While time is an inherently complex, multifaceted, subtle concept and is by nature socially embedded, it is often examined simplistically, adopting a clock-time perspective, with the focus being on speed and duration. Some disciplines such as Organisation Studies are making significant progress in understanding and theorising various aspects of temporal complexity and structuring. Yet, within the IS discipline, IS researchers are often quick to highlight the impact of information systems on the speed of organisational and social life, but can be slow to address the polymorphous, complex and nuanced nature of time in IS research. Despite a few notable exceptions, studies with a temporal dimension tend to address temporal complexity partially rather than comprehensively. Time remains theoretically elusive in contemporary studies of information systems, often excluded or included only as a 'hidden dimension'. IS literature on time and temporality emerges as fragmented and lacks the cumulative tradition and theoretical glue necessary. As the field matures, treating time as a central concept and construct is essential to theory development and progress.

This is particularly problematic in IS, given the centrality of time to many aspects of study in the field. Time, and more specifically speed, is often the raison d'etre of emerging technology, with promises of enabling real-time decision-making and implementation of action at unprecedented speed and scale. Data typically has a time value, where a data report five minutes before a meeting may be incredibly valuable, but one second after the meeting the value drops to zero. However, data can also increase in value over time as it is combined or new uses are found. Technology is usually developed under time pressure, with a rarely questioned assumption that organisations' use of technology must help them survive and thrive in the seemingly never-ending environment of dynamism and acceleration. IS researchers often use speed as a methodological proxy and even a synonym for IS value and success. However, technological speed and acceleration can undermine learning and collective creativity, and limit participation by those who are irreversibly impacted.

Temporality in information systems manifests across multiple temporal scales, ranging from moment-to-moment interactions to decades-long institutional transformations. The special issue encourages submissions that illuminate how digital technologies shape, mediate, or are embedded within temporal structures, rhythms, paths, and trajectories at any of these scales.

Across all temporal scales, the special issue especially welcomes work that advances theoretical and methodological discussions of time in Information Systems research. This includes analyses of flows, sequences, rhythms, tempos, trajectories, paths, and path nets, with more explicit attention to how temporal constructs are represented, theorised, and operationalised in IS scholarship.

The special issue also encourages contributions that link IS, temporality, and grand challenges such as climate change, pandemics, inequality, and social movements, which require multi-generational coordination, long-term data stewardship, and sustained digital infrastructures. Additionally, the special issue seeks cross-level insights into how temporal assumptions are embedded in IS and how they reshape experiences and outcomes.

The majority of empirical IS studies use time from a methodological perspective to merely strengthen causal claims. The special issue contends that the IS field is uniquely positioned to not just apply temporal techniques gleaned from other disciplines, but to inform and lead how the study of time and temporal complexity can be conducted. IS researchers can now analyse vast amounts of trace data on an unprecedented scale and engage in computationally intensive theory construction, with many emerging techniques that could be used or adapted for studying the complexities and nuances of time and technology.

The special issue envisions providing a deeper understanding of time to clarify and enhance knowledge that can explain phenomena important to IS. While contributions from other disciplines are welcome, papers where the IS artefact is foregrounded, being the central focus of the paper, are prioritised. The special issue welcomes empirical and conceptual contributions, all methodological approaches and paradigms, and studies at different levels of analysis. The journal values contrarian papers that challenge conventional assumptions, theories, and methods.

Potential topics

• How digital interfaces, notifications, and data streams reconfigure everyday temporal experience, including attention, interruption, multitasking, and asynchronous collaboration
• How people make sense of their digital pasts through data archives or online traces, and how they anticipate algorithmic or digitally mediated futures
• How workflow systems, dashboards, collaboration platforms, enterprise analytics, or predictive tools recalibrate shared temporal expectations and influence coordination
• How temporal orientations embedded in tools or analytics shape decision processes, innovation, or strategic flexibility
• Digital artefacts' temporal properties—update cycles, data retention logics, algorithmic refresh rates, and security time horizons—and how they interact with user and organizational temporal practices
• How data governance, privacy regimes, or AI systems handle conflicting temporal demands
• Temporal sensemaking challenges in artefact-centred networks, decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs), or other digitally constituted arrangements
• Why certain digital transformations accelerate rapidly while others evolve slowly and unevenly
• How digital standards, platforms, and protocols sediment, diffuse, or become institutionalised over time
• How temporal imaginaries, time horizons, or long-term digital trajectories shape fields, industries, and societies
• Theoretical and methodological discussions of time in IS research, including analyses of flows, sequences, rhythms, tempos, trajectories, paths, and path nets
• Explicit attention to how temporal constructs are represented, theorised, and operationalised in IS scholarship
• Linking IS, temporality, and grand challenges such as climate change, pandemics, inequality, and social movements
• Cross-level insights into how temporal assumptions are embedded in IS and how they reshape experiences and outcomes
• Algorithmic schedules, design and development methods such as design science, agile, continuous development and flow, and real-time vs. asynchronous communication
• How temporal assumptions align or collide with individual or cultural constructions of time
• Methodological papers and techniques for studying time and temporal complexity in IS research

Timeline

• November 1, 2026: Initial paper submission deadline
• February 1, 2027: First round authors notification
• April 15, 2027: Invited revisions deadline
• July 15, 2027: Second round authors notification
• September 30, 2027: Final revision deadline

Associate editors

• Jeremy Aroles, University of York
• Reza M. Baygi, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
• Catriona Burke, University of Limerick
• Omar El Sawy, University of Southern California
• Anne-Laure Fayard, NOVA School of Business and Economics
• Thomas Grisold, Vienna University of Economics and Business
• Amir Haj-Bolouri, University West
• Susan Hilbolling, Aarhus University
• Robin Holt, University of Bristol
• Astri Moksnes Barbala, SINTEF
• Rohit Nishant, Queen's University
• Mahya Ostovar, University of Galway
• Omid Omidvar, Warwick Business School
• Henri Pirkkalainen, Tampere University
• Frantz Rowe, University of Nantes
• Markus Salo, University of Jyväskylä
• Yingqin Zheng, University of Essex
• Aljona Zorina, NEOMA

Lorenzo Mizzau, University of Genoa

Leticia Labaronne, Zurich University of Applied Sciences

Katja Lindqvist, Lund University

Yeşim Tonga, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca

Cultural organizations, ranging from museums and heritage sites to festivals, theatres and media production houses, represent a vital component of the public sphere. Regardless of their ownership, legal status, and business model, many of these organizations pursue public missions: they produce, distribute, and safeguard cultural value, make accessible collective cultural resources, support participation and expression and sustain the creative ecosystems that enrich civic life. Cultural organizations can thereby be defined as public organizations, not only because they may receive public funding or other forms of governmental support, such as organizations that operate at arm's length, but also because culture is deemed a collective good, which makes these organizations interesting from a public management angle.

Cultural organizations are facing increasing pressure to rethink their organizational design, managerial systems, and relationships with their environment. Funding frameworks have become more volatile; governments are reconfiguring their financial engagement with culture through co-financing or project-based mechanisms; and expectations of accountability and demonstrable impact have grown. Meanwhile, digital transformation and AI-driven technologies are reshaping how culture is produced, mediated, and experienced. These shifts challenge traditional models of management, organization and governance of and for cultural organizations, raising critical questions about sustainability, legitimacy, and the evolving societal role of cultural organizations.

At the same time, cultural work itself is also changing. New collaborative models, hybrid careers, and digital production platforms demand adaptive organizational processes, new forms of coordination and control, a varied array of skills, learning needs and professional identities, and a leadership capable of balancing artistic freedom with social, environmental and economic sustainability. Cultural organizations thus provide a powerful lens for examining the changing relationship between cultural work and public commitment to culture, by analysing how managerial and organizational structures interact with public policy and governance frameworks.

This special issue explores how cultural organizations can sustain their public mission while navigating organizational, sustainability and technological transitions. Conceptual and empirical contributions are invited that investigate how it is possible to reimagine cultural organizations' managerial practices, organizational models, and governance frameworks in pursuit of their public mission.

Potential topics

• Managerial and organizational design, governance frameworks, and co-ordination in cultural organizations and cultural policy systems
• Digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and enabling technologies in the organization and management of cultural organizations
• Careers and work in cultural organizations, including changing work conditions, hybrid and digital work models, and professional development
• Human resource management, leadership, and organizational culture in cultural organizations
• Organizational learning, knowledge management, and capability development in cultural institutions
• Managing change, innovation, and transitions in cultural organizations and institutions impacting them in response to societal and technological disruptions
• Evaluation, accountability, and performance management in the pursuit of cultural and public value
• Public finance models, policies and programs: debates, changes, and effects on cultural organizations
• Social, environmental and economic sustainability, resilience and strategic management in cultural organizations

Timeline

• October 12, 2026: Deadline for research articles
• December 31, 2026: Deadline for debate and new development pieces