Call for Submissions

2026 Call for Professional Development Workshop (PDW) Proposals

Division PDW Chair: Elisa Mattarelli, San Jose State University, USA

The Communication, Digital Technology, and Organization Division (CTO) invites submissions for Professional Development Workshops (PDWs) at 2026 AOM Annual Meeting to be held 31 July through 4 August 2026, in Philadelphia, USA. PDW sessions will be held from Friday 31 July through Sunday, 2 August. PDWs are an opportunity to be innovative, discuss unresolved questions, learn or demonstrate best practices, and debate future directions in research, teaching, and practice, while organizing novel activities that bring the expertise and experience of CTO members to bear on the challenges that we all face in our daily professional lives. 

At CTO, we take pride in fostering conversations that bring together people from diverse academic and professional backgrounds. We seek sessions that recognize the division’s interdisciplinary approach in research, teaching, and practice to further the understanding of the behavioral, social, technical, and economic issues at the intersection of communication, digital technology, and organizing. The CTO Division is actively seeking PDW proposals that address important organizational issues involving anything digital, including (but not limited to) organizational communication, hybrid, virtual, and other types of technology-mediated work, artificial intelligence and machine learning, algorithmic management, digital platforms, data analytics, computational research in organization, technology and communication studies, robotics, social media, and—generally—information and communication technologies of any form. Workshops can take many forms such as tutorials, town hall meetings, breakout sessions, debates, roundtables, tours or research incubators—as long as they have a clear interactive component. 

Proposals will be evaluated on their ability to draw an audience from CTO and across the Academy, innovativeness of format and topic, coherence of elements including format and content, and the potential impact on the professional success of participants. We particularly encourage proposals that include participants at different career stages, e.g. PhD students, early-career and senior scholars, as well as practitioners, and that draw on a range of methodological perspectives, both qualitative and quantitative. Particularly appreciated are submissions that include scholars based in different countries, especially those from regions underrepresented in academic discussions. We welcome contributions from scholars who have not frequently – or ever – participated in the CTO Division PDW sessions. 

Most typically, CTO PDWs are between 90 min and 3 hours. Regardless of the requested duration for a submitted PDW, the PDW Chair may adjust the session duration if they feel that a shorter or longer duration better suits the session. To ensure diversity in the program, if two or more PDWs’ topics are overlapping, the PDW chair may ask the organizers to merge their PDWs into one before an acceptance decision is made.  

The deadline for submissions is 13 January 2026 at 17:00 ET (UTC-5/GMT-5). We only accept submissions made through the AOM submission system. If you are interested in proposing a PDW session, you are welcome to contact PDW Chair, Elisa Mattarelli, to get feedback and further develop your idea for a PDW session. To learn more about the CTO Division, please visit our website.