Designing for the Unknown: How Organizations Conceive, Interpret, and Build Their Futures (24 Sep 2026)

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 13:00:00 GMT

The Organizational Design Community (ODC) invites you to the following webinar:

Research in Progress

Designing for the Unknown: How Organizations Conceive, Interpret, and Build Their Futures

Thursday, September 24, 2026 at 9am EST/3pm CET

In this ODC “Research in Progress” (RiP) webinar, organized and moderated by Philipp Reineke (Bocconi), three PhD students - Johan Rath (Bocconi), Kyeyoung Shin (Oxford), and Elaine Pak (Wharton) working on research on organization design - present their working papers on how organizations interpret unknown futures and shape themselves to deal with it (each about 15 minutes). The presentations will be followed by a commentary by Trevor Young-Hyman (University of Pittsburgh). The webinar will end with feedback/comments from the audience. Please see below for the abstracts of the papers and the bios of the participants.

Philipp Reineke [organizer and moderator]

Bio: Philipp Reineke is an Assistant Professor at Bocconi University in the Department of Management and Technology. His research examines how emerging technologies, such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, and novel organizational forms jointly influence behavior. His broader research interests include organizational design, decentralization, decision-making, and the use of AI and machine learning methods in strategy and organizational research. His research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, and the Academy of Management Annals. He completed his PhD in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He also holds a Master of Science in Management Science and Engineering with a concentration in Computational Social Science from Stanford University, a Master of Science in Organizational Behavior from the London School of Economics, and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management.

Johan Rath [presenter]

Title: Uncertainty Unawareness

Abstract: Uncertainty is a central concept in strategy and entrepreneurship theory, inherited from economics, where it is predominantly conceptualized as a condition in which actors do not know the likelihoods or expected values of known states. This conceptualization underlies several of the field's foundational theories, including the resource-based explanation of rents and Bayesian accounts of learning. However, strategy and entrepreneurship scholars have also come to use uncertainty to describe situations in which actors do not know the relevant states themselves, under labels such as deep, radical, fundamental, and Knightian uncertainty, thereby broadening the concept beyond its economics conceptualization. The purpose of this paper is to argue that this broadening is theoretically problematic because classification under uncertainty no longer establishes the conditions required for the theoretical inferences associated with the concept. We therefore argue that the field should retain the economics conceptualization of uncertainty and adopt decision theory's concept of unawareness for situations in which actors do not know the relevant states themselves. Distinguishing between uncertainty and unawareness has at least four important theoretical implications: (1) it clarifies the boundary conditions of the resource-based view and Bayesian learning as theories of uncertainty; (2) it identifies the epistemic boundary between confidence rents and awareness rents; (3) it reconceptualizes theories of deep uncertainty as theories of unawareness; and (4) it makes visible a novel learning problem: how can actors expand their awareness to conceive possibilities of which they were previously unaware?

Bio: Johan Rath is a sixth-year PhD candidate at Bocconi University and a Research Fellow at the ION Management Science (IMS) Lab at SDA Bocconi. In fall 2026, he will join the IMS Lab at the University of Utah as a mid-doctoral fellow. Originally from Denmark, Johan holds a BSc and an MSc in Economics and Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School. His research lies at the intersection of strategy, entrepreneurship, and philosophy of science and asks how actors can expand their awareness of strategic possibilities. His work starts from the premise that, as AI becomes increasingly capable of analyzing and optimizing within established frameworks, human value creation may increasingly reside in the capacity to construct and transform the frameworks themselves. He therefore focuses on the conceptual structures through which people interpret the world—how these structures shape what they can believe, imagine, and act upon; on what grounds they can be evaluated; and how they can be reshaped to bring new possibilities into view.

Kyeyoung Shin [presenter]

Title: Custodial Identity and Prospective Sensemaking under Disruption

Abstract: Institutional custodians increasingly confront technological disruptions whose consequences for the institutions in their charge lie in an uncertain future. How do institutional custodians make sense of, and act on, a disruption to the future of the institution in their charge? Drawing on 80 interviews alongside statutes, policy documents, and institutional records, we examine this question through a comparative study of central banks confronting the rise of cryptocurrencies and digital money. Despite confronting the same technological disruption and operating under similar, stability-centered mandates, central banks read different futures for money into the disruption. Some interpreted the future of money as impending displacement, others as an unsettled opening, and others as an unclaimed opportunity. We find that these divergent interpretations were anchored in custodial identities that predated the disruption, defined by the scope of custodial purpose and the audience before whom custodianship was performed. These readings, in turn, oriented distinct repertoires of custodial action: foreclosing unwanted trajectories, probing unsettled ones through reversible commitments, and building preferred futures through legal, infrastructural, and ecosystem commitments. Our study reconceptualizes custodial work as governing institutional trajectories, shows how identity anchors prospective sensemaking, and reveals how custodial authority can make projected futures consequential.

Bio: Kyeyoung Shin is a doctoral researcher in management at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. His research focuses on how innovation ecosystems are created and orchestrated to address societal challenges. Empirically, he is particularly interested in how interoperability in financial ecosystems can promote financial inclusion and innovation in emerging economies. His broader research interests include ecosystem orchestration, temporality, and social innovation. Prior to joining Oxford Saïd, Kyeyoung worked at the World Bank’s Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice and Development Economics Vice Presidency, where he focused on innovation policy and private sector development. He holds a Master of Arts in International Policy Studies from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Arts in Politics from New York University.

Elaine Pak [presenter]

Title: Owning With Style: How Corporate Owners Shape Firm Strategy

Abstract: While management research traditionally views corporate owners as governance actors, their influence has also recently extended to driving complex organizational change within the firms they own. This raises the question of how owners implement such change across their firms. I address this in the context of private equity, using career history and work activity data from 1997 to 2024 for nearly 9 million employees across 12,775 firms receiving first-ever private equity investment. I find that following investment, portfolio firms increase hiring employees from their owner’s prior portfolio firms, particularly into managerial, finance, and operations roles. This common-owner hiring is more prevalent under owners who prioritize strategic growth relative to those focused on financial engineering or cost control, and the roles that common-owner employees occupy reflect the strategy the owner emphasizes. Portfolio firms that receive those employees then shift their organizational activities in a way that aligns with the owner’s particular focus. These findings reveal a relational mechanism through which owners shape firm strategy: as owners evolve from monitors, they implement complex organizational changes by deploying trusted talent across firm boundaries.

Bio: Elaine Pak is a PhD Candidate in Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She studies how active owners (private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds) shape the internal organization and performance of firms. Her job market finds that private equity owners redeploy talent across portfolio firms to implement their distinct value-creation strategies, particularly when they pursue strategic growth rather than financial engineering. She received my BA in public policy studies from Duke University and MS in industrial engineering from Seoul National University. Before entering academia, she was a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton in Washington, DC.

Trevor Young-Hyman [discussant]

Bio: Trevor Young-Hyman is an Associate Professor of Business Administration and Sociology, and Ben L. Fryrear Early Career Faculty Fellow, in the School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. He completed his PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a post-doctoral fellowship at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the recipient of the Horvat-Vanek Prize, the Bill Nobles Fellowship, the Louis O. Kelso Fellowship, and was a William J. Fulbright Fellow. His research examines how formal and informal organizational structures impact organizational performance and worker welfare. In particular, recent work examines decentralized organizations, multi-stakeholder governance, worker ownership, and high purpose organizations. In that research, he has used a range of methods and data sources, including archival data analysis, laboratory-based experiments, surveys, interviews, and ethnography. His research has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Management Science, Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, among other academic outlets. He is currently a Senior Editor at Organization Science. Trevor has also worked with governmental and non-profit organizations in multi-stakeholder collaborations, developing data collection processes and providing program evaluation. He led data collection and analysis for the Pittsburgh Citywide Taskforce on Employee Ownership, serves on the operational advisory committee of 412 Food Rescue, and founded the Pittsburgh Business Legacy Conference.

Register here: https://orgdesigncomm.com/events

Registration closes on 23 September 2026 at 9 am EST

The live webinar is open to the public. The recorded webinar is only available for ODC members.

Come join us!

Arianna Marchetti

Assistant Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship

Lee Kong Chian School of Business

Singapore Management University

Organization Design Community Annual Conference 2026 (30 Sep 2026)

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 14:00:00 GMT

ODC annual conference 2026

Designing for the Unknown

September 30 - October 1st, 2026

The 2026 ODC Annual Conference will be held fully on-line, spread out over two consecutive days: September 30 and October 1. It is co-organized by Özgecan Koçak (Emory University) and Jeroen van Bree (Berenschot & University of Amsterdam). The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Designing for the Unknown’. The unprecedented turbulence that organizations are currently faced with means we have to design for an unknown future. Our hope is that this conference will be a forum for exchange about this pressing issue between academics, practitioners, and executives. On the first day of the conference, we want to explore several developments that are bringing change and uncertainty to organizations, such as the rise of GenAI, geopolitical turbulence, and climate change. On the second day, we want to explore what innovations the field of organization design can bring to address these challenges.

If your organization is sending more than one participant to the conference, we offer two options. One option is to become a corporate member, which offers full access to all the benefits of ODC membership for an unlimited number of members from your organization. The other option is to get a custom discount for this annual conference, based on the number of people from your organization that are signing up. For both options, please contact us at info@orgdesigncomm.com.

Programme

Day 1 (September 30, times below in CET)

3.45-4.00pm: Waiting room

4.00-4.15pm: Opening & community building exercise

4.15-4.55pm: Keynote by Joel Podolny: Designing for the Unknown + Q&A

4.55-5.05pm: Coffee break

5.05-5.50pm: Parallel working groups (choose one during registration)

Geopolitical turbulence and the impact on business (Henk Volberda)
GenAI and the Dissolution of Organizational Boundaries (John Joseph)
Organizational Responses to Climate Change (Garima Sharma)

5.50-6.25pm: Closing panel featuring the working group conveners, moderated by Phanish Puranam (panelists: John Joseph, Henk Volberda, Garima Sharma)

6.25-6.30pm: Thank you and goodbye

6.30-7.00pm: Cocktail room

Day 2 (October 1st, times below in CET)