Academia in the Post‐Pandemic World: Leapfrogging into the Unknown – Tales from Organizing EGOS 2020
基于组织2020年EGOS在线学术会议的经验，探讨了学术社区在虚拟化过程中面临的挑战，如部落化、批评缺失和社交媒体的影响，对学术组织者和学者有警示意义。
Over the past months, we have been witnessing nothing less than a radical rupture in the globally shared “institutional fabric”: ‘discontinuities in the taken-for-granted features of global society that have developed over the past decades’ (Hwang and Höllerer, 2020, p. 294). And academia is no exception. While deeply institutionalized practices of academic life have not been radically altered for the most part, many of us have formed the view that the COVID-19 pandemic and the cascading effects of the corresponding global crisis are likely to lead to the end of academic life ‘as we know it’. And still, we have little idea as to exactly how such changing practices will pan out in the long-run, how profound the changes might be, and how long-lasting their effects. Our commentary offers a number of provocations. A key metaphor we wish to develop is ‘cultural leapfrogging’: a situation ‘in which a next-generation institutional infrastructure is imagined and created more or less de novo rather than merely imitating, adapting, or translating an institutional design observed elsewhere’ (Gehman and Höllerer, 2019, p. 233). With the technological aspects of leapfrogging all too familiar to those of us who have spent considerable time moving our lives online, the social aspects of such a shift have attracted less attention. Cultural leapfrogging, happening in often contested instances, is not without risk: the moment you ‘leap’, regularly with limited time for reflection, you are catapulted into uncharted territory – with little idea as to where exactly you will land. In this commentary, we wish to share anecdotes and insights on such a cultural leapfrogging experience drawn from organizing the 2020 EGOS Colloquium online: the first author as the then-President of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) and the second author in his role as Chair of the 2020 Local Organizing Committee. Overall, we intend to tell a cautionary tale, covering a number of issues such as community building, collegiality, critique and constructive feedback, cross-fertilization of ideas, socialization of newcomers, and networking among scholars. The current COVID-19 crisis has afforded a number of opportunities, but it has also led to more troublesome consequences – some of which, we argue, are potentially irreversible. The 2020 EGOS Colloquium was conceptualized as a sustainable conference – with the idea of minimizing the carbon footprint of an international conference of this size and format. Soon after the global COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, it became clear that there was no way the conference could run as envisaged on the campus of the University of Hamburg, Germany. When we decided, on 17 March 2020, to organize the Colloquium as a virtual conference, we knew that we wanted to do this instead of cancelling it altogether – but in all honesty we had little idea what the journey would entail. After all, we were among the first major associations and scholarly communities to make a move on this scale, involving a full conference with thousands of participants from across the globe. We were unsure how it would work out technology-wise: by early 2020, not many had experience with Zoom-based teaching, and there were no ready-made online conferencing platforms available either. So that was one ‘unknown’ for us – and finances were another. But there was a much greater concern: how could we possibly move 60+ EGOS sub-themes (i.e., conference streams) and 1,800 paper presentations into the virtual sphere; successfully run opening, keynote, and award ceremonies; host social events and networking receptions; and, in general, maintain the academic spirit of a lively conference? How could we hold the community together as one, across continents and time zones? We were worried whether our sub-theme convenors and participants would be prepared to follow us in this endeavour, or if instead we would receive a large number of cancellations and end up with a fragmented conference. With the backing of the EGOS leadership, we concluded that we had little to lose. Hoping that the community would come along and be somewhat forgiving of all kinds of potential glitches and hiccups, we felt that this prospect was still better than simply pulling the plug. The success of EGOS 2020 came as a surprise. We were amazed that almost all sub-themes ran as planned, with only a few cancellations from submitting authors, and a huge crowd cheering (virtually) that EGOS was brave enough to continue with the conference. With the support of many helping hands, we managed to get a full program together, much as we had planned it under ‘normal’ circumstances. Convenors worked closely with us to create innovative solutions for the sub-themes, adapted to challenges, and made sure the conference turned out to be a rewarding experience for almost all involved. In the end, we had no less than 2,100 participants over 5 days of conferencing, 470 live sessions, pre-conference workshops, sub-plenary sessions, a keynote (even with a live debate), and a worthy (pre-recorded) opening and award ceremony. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and by far exceeded our expectations. With this, and with technology working perfectly, many of our worries vanished. We had leapt, we were airborne – but where would we land? Witnessing a number of wonderful developments and positive outcomes, not all of them anticipated, it was overall a truly extraordinary experience. At the same time, though, we have observed a few more troublesome implications that we feel need to be reflected on. Cultural leapfrogging might come at a price, and there is a concern that we might be about to lose important aspects of academic life that we have grown quite fond of. ‘Being lonely together’: this emotional expression, to be heard in one form or another over the entire 2020 conference season, also captured some of our own feelings. Indeed, it was somewhat awkward sitting alone in front of our laptops in a deserted office wing at the original Colloquium venue at the University of Hamburg (Daniel), or in the middle of the night in a small beach-side apartment in quasi-locked down Sydney (Markus), whilst the EGOS Colloquium was getting into full swing. It was the impression of an impoverished experience that we shared with many of our peers. In contrast to previous years, we, as the organizers, were not able to float between rooms and sessions to get a feel of how the event was being received. We vividly remember a frantic call between the two of us immediately after the opening ceremony: EGOS 2020 is obviously on – but what is actually going on? Is everything working for all the sub-themes? Are people showing up? How is the spirit among participants? In fact, we had to rely heavily on social media to get direct feedback on, and from, the conference. We were checking for issues as well as for positive and uplifting comments on Twitter, and we monitored trending posts like addicts. It was, however, only a partial remedy for how odd we felt. As we later learned from various individual comments, such feeling of isolation was shared by others – albeit to varying degrees: some sub-themes experienced quite engaged and creative exchanges that left attendees pleasantly surprised by how well the online format actually worked. In particular, sub-themes in which a substantial number of participants already knew each other from previous instances, or where convenors truly went the extra mile, recorded a high level of interaction, and as a result created a very positive impression. Participants in sub-themes with less ‘social glue’ or creativity, as well as newcomers to EGOS, had a more mixed overall experience. What was striking, however, was that activities beyond the sub-theme level, those geared towards all Colloquium attendees (i.e., keynote, sub-plenaries, or various socials), did not generate similar levels of enthusiasm. All of a sudden, we were not one big community dividing into sub-theme sessions whenever scheduled, but a number of disconnected tribes, each with its own emerging internal norms of engagement and very little engagement across the tribes. Such tribalization leaves us pondering a pivotal question: what holds a scholarly community together in an increasingly virtual academic world? The EGOS community has been built on a distinct ‘EGOS spirit’, which emphasizes the development of a shared scholarly agenda over several days within one particular sub-theme and connects participants to the local academic setting. An exclusively virtual setting comes with the considerable risk of being reduced to an anonymous ‘service-providing platform’ whose role is limited to ensuring technical functionality for the gathering of multiple tribes. But it does not stop there. We will also have to deal with raised expectations in terms of the professionalism of the very service at offer: ‘we pay, so what do we get for it?’. Even though we charged only a symbolic conference fee, we still had to debate the benefits of EGOS membership with some participants. Such perceptions and expectations will impact future ‘business models’ for online and hybrid conferencing. In addition, these issues should be a reminder to all of us why we have committed ourselves to scholarly societies and associations in the first place. What is the ultimate benefit for the individual scholar moving forward? We have learned that running mini-conferences of like-minded scholars works quite well online – sometimes even better than face-to-face. And if such smaller-scale meetings are in fact easier to organize, and at almost zero cost, is there still any value-add in being part of a larger association that ties together these various sub-communities? One might start wondering whether the 50–70 tribes (in our case, the EGOS sub-themes) indeed any longer need and/or value the ‘umbrella’ of the overall conference/association. Overall, we note that identity and strong ‘sense of belonging’ have likely become even more double-edged swords in the virtual academic environment. And it is in this sense that cultural leapfrogging equally reveals a double-edged character. The ‘new normal’ demands creative solutions on the part of scholarly associations and event organizers for all forms of conferencing – face-to-face, online, and hybrid – while also retaining a distinct spirit and set of values within and across an academic community. From the anonymized log files of the Zoom-based conference platform we learned that – quite literally – ‘Zoom-ing’ in and out of virtual rooms was common practice over the 5 days of the conference. We admit that even we occasionally switched between parallel sub-plenaries, in fear of missing out on something important, or aiming to get a ‘best of’, and consequently were lacking adequate attention span and loyalty to the presenters. However, an important aspect of the EGOS spirit is that it is built around the firm notion of collegiality, which entails a commitment to a specific sub-theme’s program over the entire Colloquium. As a matter of fact, there are significantly lower transaction costs and fewer social controls in place during a virtual conference. Entry and exit barriers are fairly low; anonymity is arguably higher; and switching channels is easy and more accepted than physically changing rooms while sessions are running. We certainly noticed the increased tendency of participants to focus on delivering their own presentation and receiving feedback – and then, too often leave the room for more exciting options. Peer control seems rather difficult online for conference sizes above a certain threshold; and new social norms still need to emerge. Moving online certainly has fostered a more ‘transactional’ understanding of academic exchange, which seems aligned with the notion of conferences resembling platforms rather than the gathering of a community. Culturally, this may have important consequences for community spirit, collegiality, and scholarly engagement. These characteristics might become less important, less visible, and hence less practiced. Against this background, how can we contribute to preserving the unique spirit and values of collegiality even for those who become socialized in the ‘new normal’? It seems critical to hold on to some important rules of engagement – and practice them accordingly. We tend to the view that more senior scholars, in particular, have a huge responsibility to foster this academic culture and act as role models when attending and convening conferences, no matter the format. The instrumental importance of social media, and Twitter in particular, for the 2020 Colloquium – and also for our own wellbeing – caught us, we willingly admit, by surprise. Being very late to the party ourselves, Daniel started using Twitter last year to showcase his academic institute, and Markus, a long-time self-declared sceptic of social media, re-activated his dormant LinkedIn account just in time for EGOS 2020, and even signed up for Twitter on the very first day of the conference to be able to follow what was going on. Social media emerged as the principal arena in which impressions about the conference were exchanged. Posts ranged from praise of how well a particular session was run and organized, to how great a specific presentation was, to links to one’s own work that related to the ideas discussed. Featured imagery included Zoom screenshots, memes, or the location from which people were following the conference. Overall, we were thrilled about the overwhelmingly positive tone of comments and by the high number of people active on social media. But being active on Twitter was not just vanity: if we did not post, others would do so – and maybe not in the way we would like essential information to be spread in the context of the conference. Which brings us to an important issue: who speaks on behalf of a virtual event in which we are all participating, but only from afar? How do we talk about the event? How do we avoid voices on social media becoming tribal at times? And, more generally, who has legitimacy to speak on behalf of any constituency within a community such as EGOS? This all goes hand in hand with an irreversible trend in academia to use social media like Twitter or ResearchGate in order to be seen, to enhance the visibility of one’s work, and to develop one’s own ‘brand’ (Mehrpouya and Willmott, 2018). There are some notable consequences for academic exchange that we observed during EGOS 2020. With a few exceptions, on social media there was collective praise – and hardly any critique. The scholarly discourse during the conference became dominated by a handful of social media savvy scholars, seniors and juniors alike, who garnered a large amount of attention. While some might still regard this as an opportunity for ‘democratizing’ and overthrowing the traditional status hierarchy within academia, we are more sceptical: s/he who has more followers who echo a posted What also comes with this is a tendency towards a new academic has been but when and from a large number of become the ultimate this a new And it to the of some quite such as the of the work of scholars, or scholars to seniors to praise them for their of in order to get their attention. while the Twitter the two of us were by the of an ‘in of how to this new we have the way for a new and a set of Is it all about and visibility and not critique and being active online all the time – and for s/he who to lose the We as a scholarly we to of and an – and such on impact most likely goes way beyond the of our commentary As a scholarly we need to and for and early scholars. was the tone of feedback during online paper The of around the paper being for and and for or one could focus on. or more substantial were lacking in the – and all the more so on social media. 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